Screens cover the wall like windows onto a world once thought locked shut. Octavia sits at the edge of her chair, fingers digging into the armrest. The room is full, yet all she hears is the pounding of her own heart.
On the broadcast, two faces. Twins. Not ghosts. Not doctored silhouettes like enemy propaganda. Real bodies, real voices, real scars. The boy speaks first, his tone flat but cutting, and when he lifts his shirt to show the round burns carved into his skin, the room around her lets out a ripple of shocked murmurs.
Octavia doesn't move. Her nails claw into the leather.
Then the girl speaks. Her voice shakes, but she does not yield. The words strike: abduction, drugs, experiments, assaults. The images they paint are unbearable. Octavia's breath stalls when the final word lands, the one she dreaded: sterilized.
The cameras don't cut. No black screen, no jamming. Everything goes through. Raw. Unfiltered.
The aides behind her panic, shuffling papers, snapping at technicians to kill the feed. Too late. The waves are out, already relayed.
Octavia knows: the streets will see this. Families. Parents. Children. The whispers already buzzing against the government will turn to cries. Not for soldiers fallen far away, not for so-called traitors... but for two teenagers taken, broken, and now speaking in front of everyone.
Her stomach knots. Her father...
She shuts her eyes a moment. He will never forgive this. Not the breach, not the truth spilled live across every household, not the public opinion now slipping out of his control.
"How... how did they manage it?" stammers one advisor.
"They had inside relays," another cuts in, cold. "Of course. The hack is sophisticated, but the preparation— the preparation was human."
Octavia no longer listens. Her eyes are fixed on the screen, where the brother and sister keep talking, voices worn but steady. Each word a blade driven into the armor of the regime.
She knows: nothing will ever be the same.
When the screens finally go dark, a frozen silence crushes the room. Then a single voice, low, implacable, slices through the air behind her:
"Octavia."
She freezes. Her father is here. She hadn't heard the door open, but she would know that voice anywhere.
She already knows what he will say. What he will order. Her heart beats harder.
"There is only one outcome now," he says as he steps closer. "Open war."
His breath grazes her ear, icy.
"You will make sure opinion turns back to our side. That those two are seen not as victims, but as liars. Delinquents. Rats. And you will lock our channels down immediately. Because they will try again. Now that they've done it once, they will do it again."
Octavia nods, her neck stiff. She knows he will kill her if he senses a crack in her. And yet, deep in her gut, one certainty rises against her will: it may already be too late.
---
The television flickers on its stand. A mother folds laundry in silence, her two children playing at her feet. When the twins appear on-screen, she frowns at first, curious. Then the words drop: continuous drugs, abuse, experiments.
A shirt slips from her hands. Her heart races, her palms sweat. When Elijah shows his round scars, her knees almost buckle. Instinctively, she seizes her children and crushes them to her chest, too tightly. One wriggles, protesting, trapped. She rocks them, sobbing.
How can anyone do this to children? Her mind races, conjuring visions of her own sons ripped from school, dragged into one of those "centers." Rage and terror shake her.
"Mama, why are you crying?" the younger asks, his small voice muffled against her sweater.
She doesn't answer. Because there is nothing to say. Because now she knows—it could be them.
---
The room reeks of burnt coffee and cigarette smoke. The workers usually talk loud, but when the image shifts, the noise dies. The faces of Mira and Elijah fill the screen. The silence turns heavy.
A burly man, hands black with grease, snorts.
— It's theater. They learned their lines.
But beside him, a younger man with a tattoo on his forearm trembles, eyes locked on the screen. He grips his mug so tightly it looks ready to shatter.
— You think you can fake eyes like that? You think anyone can act fear like that?
The older one grumbles, but doesn't answer. They all keep watching. When Mira speaks of sterilization, several men flinch.
The younger worker thinks of his little brother, fifteen, the same age Elijah had been when he disappeared. His stomach heaves, bile rising in his throat. It could be him.
No one dares speak. Even those who'd like to laugh can't manage it.
---
The living room is hushed, curtains drawn. On the screen, Mira speaks. The woman, elegant, lifts her handkerchief to her mouth. When she hears "sexual abuse," a sob breaks loose. She thinks of her niece, fifteen, her bright laugh. The thought alone shatters her.
— They're variables, her husband says in a hard voice. Necessary sacrifices.
He sits rigid, suit immaculate, arms crossed. But his jaw trembles. Because despite himself, he sees his own daughter strapped to a table, drugged, mutilated. The image crushes him, and he clings to his excuse: necessary.
His wife shakes her head.
— Nothing justifies this. Nothing.
The silence that follows is a gulf opening between them.
---
The workers crowd around the old set balanced on a crate. When Mira says "abuse," a shiver runs through the dormitory. When she says "sterilized," cries of shock burst out.
A young man, trembling, slams his fist against the wall.
— Kids! They were in tenth grade...
His eyes burn with rage. Beside him, a girl shakes her head, arms crossed tight.
— You don't get it... if we admit this, then everything we believed in collapses.
Another, perched on the edge of a bunk, buries his face in his hands. Because he's already heard the rumors. And deep down, he knows they weren't just stories.
Silence falls again, heavy as a slab.
---
The common room echoes with the twins' voices. Soldiers stare at the screen.
A young man snickers nervously.
— Whining.
But the old one, hair gone gray, turns toward him. His gaze is steel. The laugh dies at once. The old man says nothing. But he's thinking of his fifteen-year-old daughter. He sees her smile, sees her running—and Mira's face blurs into hers.
Silence falls. Even the most cynical feel the crack open.
---
The clamor of the market freezes. Heads turn toward the hanging screens. When Mira says "sterilized," a woman drops her bag of apples. They scatter across the ground. She doesn't move.
An old man spits.
— Propaganda. They just want to soften us up.
But she shakes her head, eyes wet. She thinks of her pregnancies, her children. The thought of ripping that away from a teenager strikes her like lightning.
— No... that's not an act.
Murmurs erupt. Some shout it's a lie. Others, that if it's true, then nothing holds anymore.
---
The living room is spotless, the screen brand new. The man leaps up the instant he hears "experiments" and cuts the sound.
Too late. His ten-year-old daughter stares at him, wide eyes locked on his.
— Papa? Why are they saying that?
He opens his mouth. No sound comes. Because he has no answer. Because if he speaks the truth, he shatters everything.
---
The television spits its usual static, crooked on the buffet. Tomasz doesn't really pay attention at first. He's just come back from his apprenticeship, still in his work overalls, letting his eyes drift without listening. Until two faces fill the screen.
He freezes. His heart skips a beat.
— ...Mira? Elijah?
He recognizes them instantly. Even after all this time, there is no mistake.
His mind slams back four years. High school, the too-strict gray uniforms, the classrooms that smelled of chalk. Mira two rows ahead, her hair always falling across her green eyes, her notebook wide open. Elijah, in the same uniform, collar never straight, already taller than most boys, always surrounded. The two of them inseparable.
He remembers the day he realized he had a crush on Mira. Grammar class. He'd messed up the agreement again, the others had laughed under their breath. But she had turned her notebook toward him, had written the corrected sentence in her small round handwriting, and explained softly: "See? Like this, it matches." No judgment. No ridicule. She'd even slipped a quiet joke about the teacher, enough to make him smile despite himself. Mira was gentle, but not naïve: she saw everything, and she knew how to laugh with a kind of sharpness.
Elijah—he had admired him. He remembers gym class: Elijah outrunning everyone, agile, fast, a real lion. Everyone wanted to follow him, to be on his team. And more than that, he was protective. The day a senior shoved Mira as a joke, Elijah had exploded, ready to fight someone twice his size. Mira had held him back, but everyone had seen his eyes: burning, ready to do anything for her.
Tomasz still hears the slam of the biology classroom door. Two men in uniform. They had asked for Mira and Elijah. "Take your things." The two had stood, a little confused. Mira clutching her notebook against her chest, Elijah setting a hand on her shoulder. They had walked out. And they never came back. People whispered about a move, a family problem. Tomasz had believed it, naïvely. It hurt, but he had gone on. That's what you do at fifteen.
And now...
On the screen, Elijah speaks first. His voice is deeper, but Tomasz knows that straightforward tone. He talks about the constant drugs. A shiver runs up Tomasz's spine. He sees himself, gulping coffee to get through study sessions—and he imagines Elijah forced to swallow substances every day, no choice, no escape. His stomach twists.
Then Elijah pulls off his shirt. Tomasz gags. The round burns scarred into his skin—he knows them. They look like cigarette butts pressed in. He shuts his eyes, fists tight. They burned you. You, the fastest, the strongest. You, who never let your sister fall.
Mira speaks. Her voice trembles at first, but she doesn't stop, each word harder than the last. She talks about shocks, about experiments. Tomasz buries his head in his hands. They were fourteen, damn it. He sees Mira at that age—uniform too big, hair pulled back in a hurry, her discreet smile when she scribbled in the margins. And he cannot reconcile that image with what she says now: needles, metal, bodies treated like equipment.
Then the words drop. The unbearable ones. "Sexual abuse." Tomasz jolts upright, nausea rising in his throat. His gut convulses. He feels bile sting his mouth.
Not her. Not Mira.
He imagines her—small, shy, always polite. Imagines her trapped, humiliated, cornered by guards, by scientists. The thought alone destroys him. He digs his fingers into his hair like he's trying to keep his skull from splitting.
And when they explain they were pushed so far they forgot each other—then his eyes burn. To erase Mira from Elijah's memory? Elijah, who lived for her, who defended her against everything? How much did they have to break him for that? How deep did they twist his mind?
The tears finally come, hot, unstoppable.
He sees again that day in biology, when they left the classroom. Mira had glanced back once, like she wanted to say something. He'd thought it was a silent goodbye. Now he knows it was disappearance. Erasure.
And he had believed the "move." He had believed the easy words. He had gone on, because that's what you do at that age. And the guilt crushes him now. Because he should have asked. He should have remembered.
He stares at Mira on the screen. Her eyes—marked now, but still the same. She speaks of what was done to her with impossible dignity. Elijah beside her, nodding, backing every word.
Tomasz shakes. His stomach churns. He can hardly breathe. And only one thought rips through him: they survived. But at what cost?
He feels sick. And he knows, deep in himself, he will never forget again.