Kai Langford - January 2121
Ethan sleeps soundly beside me, one arm stretched across the mattress where I had been lying only moments ago. His breathing is slow and steady, completely at peace, while every time I close my eyes, I see the same photographs.
Our mother looks so happy. Young and carefree. Nothing like the woman I had imagined growing up.
I can't stop wondering what kind of person she really was, or how someone who smiles like that could choose someone like our father. Every answer I come up with only leads to another question, and before long a dull ache begins to settle behind my eyes.
Knowing sleep isn't coming, I carefully slip out of bed without waking Ethan. He has worried enough about me lately, and the last thing I want is for him to wake simply because my thoughts won't leave me alone.
The cold night air wraps around me the moment I step outside. It bites at my skin, but I welcome it. The sharp chill clears my head far better than the warmth inside ever could.
I pull a cigarette from my jacket and roll it between my fingers before lighting it. I'd promised Ethan I would cut back, and I genuinely intend to keep that promise. But ever since arriving here, everything has felt unnaturally peaceful. The silence should be comforting, yet it only puts me on edge. Years of surviving danger have taught me that quiet rarely lasts, and some part of me keeps waiting for it to be broken.
I haven't walked far before I hear footsteps crunching through the snow behind me. My body reacts before my mind has time to think, every muscle tightening as I turn towards the sound.
Noah.
The tension eases almost immediately.
Without thinking, I drop the cigarette into the snow and crush it beneath my boot, already expecting another lecture about quitting. Instead, Noah simply stops a few steps away. His hands remain tucked inside his coat pockets, but I notice the faint movement beneath the fabric as his fingers fidget.
"I didn't know you were still awake" I say.
Only then do I notice the campfire burning in the distance. Finn sits beside it, quietly watching the flames dance. He doesn't look in our direction, almost as though he knows Noah needs this conversation to stay between the two of us.
"I could say the same for you," Noah replies.
A small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth.
"Touché."
His gaze drops briefly to the cigarette buried beneath the snow before returning to me. Strangely, he says nothing and that unsettles me far more than if he'd criticised me.
He's been different for days. Not cold, exactly, but distracted. Every conversation feels as though he's carefully stepping around something, weighing every word before deciding not to say it.
The silence stretches until I can't ignore it any longer.
"Are you finally going to tell me what's on your mind?" I ask quietly.
He flinches for the briefest moment before his expression smooths over again.
"Come for a walk by the lake," he says instead.
It's not the answer I'm hoping for, and irritation prickles beneath my skin. Not because he's avoiding the question, but because I hate seeing him carry something alone.
I fall into step beside him as we walk towards the frozen lake. Moonlight spills across the ice, making it shimmer beneath a thin blanket of snow. Apart from the crunch of our boots, the world is silent.
After several minutes, Noah finally speaks.
"Do you think life would've been different if our Mother survived?"
The question catches me off guard. I'd assumed I was the only one thinking about those photographs, but perhaps they've been haunting him too.
"I don't know," I admit honestly.
He keeps his eyes fixed on the frozen lake.
"I believe it would have"
"What makes you think that?" I ask. "She married someone like father, and she worked for GeneX. Maybe... maybe they believed the same things."
"I don't think so." His answer comes quietly but with unusual certainty. "Uncle Owen cared about her. When we asked about her, he had looked genuinely upset."
I remember the expression on Owen's face.
The grief.
The anger.
The pain he couldn't hide.
If our mother is truly like our father, would someone like Owen mourn for her so deeply?
The thought settles heavily inside my chest. Maybe she really was kind. Maybe she would've loved us if she'd been given the chance.
Without thinking, I drift a little closer until our shoulders almost touch. Noah continues looking across the lake, his face calm as always, but sadness lingers quietly in his eyes.
"Maybe things would be different," I say after a while. "But father wouldn't have let her protect us. He'd still force you to follow in his footsteps and I..." The rest catches in my throat.
He'd still have treated me the same. But there isn't any need to say it aloud.
Some memories don't need words.
After another long silence, Noah finally speaks again.
"If she had been here, you would've had someone looking after you while you were growing up."
There's something fragile in his voice that makes my chest tighten.
Is he blaming himself?
Does he really think he failed me?
I shake my head.
"But I had you."
He finally looks at me.
"I don't know what it's like to have a mother, so I can't really miss something I've never had. But I do know what it's like to have someone who stays beside me no matter what."
A small smile finds its way onto my face.
"You've always been there, Noah. When father had punished me, when I couldn't sleep, when I thought I couldn't keep going... you're were there."
I hold his gaze.
"So when I think about growing up without a mother..." I pause, searching for the right words. "It doesn't hurt as much, because I never grow up alone."
Noah's throat bobs.
Almost immediately, he turns his face away, hiding whatever emotion has surfaced before I can see it clearly.
I reach over and gently pat Noah on the back, letting the small gesture carry what I cannot fully say.
"So," I ask quietly, keeping my voice soft, "are you going to tell me what has really been on your mind?"
His shoulders drop as he exhales, the sound heavy with whatever he has been holding in for days. After a moment he lowers himself into the snow as though he no longer has the energy to remain standing, then pats the space beside him for me to sit.
I sit without hesitation, the cold seeping through my clothes almost immediately.
For a while neither of us speaks. The frozen lake stretches out before us, pale under the moonlight, while the distant campfire flickers like a quiet heartbeat in the dark.
Noah finally breaks the silence, his voice careful but strained.
"I've been concerned about you." he says. "I'm aware you're improving, and I hesitated to bring this up in case it affected your health again. But I couldn't stop thinking about it. Finn advised me to speak to you about it."
I shift slightly, discomfort tightening in my chest, because I already suspect this is about that night, and hearing that he has been discussing it with Finn makes it feel even heavier than I expected.
"So what do you want to say?" I ask, though my voice is less steady than I intend it to be.
Noah studies me for a long moment before finally speaking.
"It is about father" he finally admits "about what happened that day he found you on christmas".
As soon as the words leave his mouth something inside me drops sharply, like the ground has shifted beneath me. I push a hand through my hair, trying to steady myself, trying to keep my breathing even as dread settles in my stomach.
"Do you think he was the trigger?" Noah asks quietly, not looking away. "Did that lead to you losing control?"
My pulse quickens almost immediately, and for a moment I want nothing more than to stand up and walk away from the question, from the memory, from everything it drags with it. But I know he would follow, and worse than that, I do not want to shut him out again after everything that happened last time.
So I stay where I am, even as my body resists it.
"I don't know," I admit after a moment, my voice quieter than I want it to be. The truth feels uncertain and sharp at the same time as I try to make sense of it. "Maybe it was him. Maybe it was Christopher. Maybe it was Murphy."
The names feel heavier as I speak them, each one dragging something unwanted to the surface.
I look down at my hands without meaning to, as if expecting to see blood that is not there anymore, something that never fully left.
"You did not have a choice," Noah says gently, as though he is trying to hold me steady with his words alone.
"But I did," I answer more sharply than intended, the emotion breaking through before I can stop it. My voice wavers as I continue, because I cannot pretend it did not happen the way it did.
"I didn't have to kill them like that. I almost tore Christopher apart, and even after Murphy was already dead, I could not stop myself from driving the knife into him again and again."
Noah falls silent, pulling his knees closer to his chest as he listens without interrupting.
"It was not you," he says after a moment. His voice is firm now, more certain, like he is trying to convince both of us. "It was the serum. The one I forced on you."
I shake my head, frustration rising beneath the guilt because I cannot separate what I did from what I remember.
"It was me," I say, more firmly now, though it hurts to say it aloud. "I don't know why everyone keeps trying to separate it from me. I could have killed you, kill Ethan. I almost killed our friends."
My hands tighten slightly in the snow as the words keep coming, even when I wish they would stop.
Noah does not answer immediately. He just draws his legs in closer, as if bracing himself against something he cannot fix yet.
When he finally speaks, his voice is quieter, but unwavering, as he looks out across the frozen lake. "I will find a cure, Kai," he says. "Regardless of the cost or what it takes to achieve it."