Rivals

Brent watched Maggie struggle with a sense of profound detachment. That wasn't his sister with her hand stuck in the wall. It was some evil creature that didn't deserve to live. Who knew what she had done to Lucy? He wouldn't put anything past her anymore. She'd had a chance to redeem herself. She'd had plenty of chances, and she had refused every time to do the right thing.

He felt like something enormous and powerful and right was growing inside of him. A creature of pure light, of justice. Whatever he might do to Maggie was less than she deserved. He looked down at his feet and found a broken computer monitor lying there, its cord twisted around it like a broken tail. Its screen had cracked in a million pieces, each of them triangular and sharp like a tooth. He plucked one out of the broken machine and held it in both of his hands.

"Come on, then," Maggie said. "What are you waiting for?"

Brent wondered as much, himself. He took a step toward her and he felt like he was getting stronger with every moment that passed. When he brought the shard of glass down his arm would be strengthened by the sheer correctness of the act.

He lifted the glass knife over his head. She had stopped struggling and seemed to be just waiting for him to strike. Perhaps she had come to accept that this was necessary. The fitting end to their rivalry. Their sibling rivalry.

How could we turn out so different? I can't believe you are my father's daughter, he thought, and started to bring the weapon down on her head -

- and caught himself in mid-swing.

But you are.

"Dad," he said out loud. "Dad wouldn't - "

"I killed Dad! You should avenge him," Maggie said. Her eyes were filling with tears, he saw, and that made him feel very strange. "You should do it for him."

"Did you - did you find him in there? In the cylinder?" Brent asked. His own voice sounded like it was coming from someone else's body.

"Yes! He was still there. So I took him out and buried him. Out in the desert where the FBI can't dig him up to study his corpse."

Brent felt as if he were watching her from above, as if he were floating up near the ceiling looking down at her - and at himself. His body was down there, frozen in place, as if time had stopped for it. "Was it... bad?" he asked. "I mean, was he all messed up?"

Maggie turned her face away from him. "You don't want to know." She sighed. "You can't do this, can you? You're not strong enough."

"He asked me not to fight so much with you. Right before he died. And here we are, doing exactly what we always did." Brent shook his head, and below him he saw his body shake its head, too. He could feel the piece of glass cutting his fingers and he let it go. It crashed on the floor and the noise was loud enough to jar him, to make him blink. Suddenly he was back in his own body. It hadn't been real, he knew. He hadn't ever left it. He'd just gotten so worked up, so angry it had felt that way. He wondered if that was how Maggie felt all the time. Now he was back in his body the thought made him shiver. "Just tell me where Lucy is. Tell me what you did to her."

"And then what? You'll let me go?" It didn't sound like she even wanted that. But then, what did she want?

"No," he said. "It's gone too far for that. I'll turn you over to Weathers. He promised me he would get you the help you need."

"How absolutely gracious of him," Maggie said. And then she pulled her hand out of the wall. She hadn't really been trapped - it had been an act. But why? Brent was still trying to figure that out when her foot came up and smashed him across the face.

"I'm sorry, bro, but only one of us can leave here today," she said. He was still spinning around, trying to figure out where she was. Then she just appeared out of his blind spot and grabbed him, picked him up and threw him through the wall of the trailer. "If it has to be me, then so be it!" she called as he sailed through the brilliant desert sunlight. He hit the side of a boulder with his face and dropped in a heap.

A moment later her hands grabbed him under the armpits and she hauled him upright - just to throw him again. He hit the side of a bulldozer hard enough that it rang like a bell. His vision blurred and his brain felt like it was spinning inside his skull. He needed to get his bearings, he knew, he needed to get up on his feet and be ready for her before she -

With no warning at all she hit him in the chest with a rock as big as his head. The breath exploded out of him and he saw little lights go shooting through his vision. She hit him again, this time in the stomach, and pain blossomed inside his abdomen as something vital burst open. Instantly he could feel his body putting itself back together, felt his guts grow warm and then hot as they tried to slither back into their appropriate places. But he was sagging to his knees and he knew if she hit him again he wouldn't be able to get up.

She hit him again. And again. His head slumped forward and she smashed the back of his neck with her rock. This was all it would take, he realized. She could kill him this easily, by grinding him to a pulp, one blow at a time. He felt as powerless and insubstantial as the faint warm breeze that played through his hair.

She's stronger than you, Weathers had told him. He was faster, but that didn't matter if he couldn't get up on his feet, if he couldn't dodge her attacks. He saw the rock coming toward his face and he tried to weave over to one side, but he barely moved enough that the rock caught his cheek and ear instead of his nose. The pain was just as intense. The noise of bones breaking was just as loud in his inner ear.

She lifted the rock again, lifted it high in both hands. She was going to bring it straight down on the top of his head, he knew. It would be the last thing he ever felt. Everything would go black, and it would finally be over.

"Wait," Lucy said.

The rock didn't come down. Brent had thought maybe he'd just heard Lucy's voice in his own head, as a kind of hallucination, but apparently Maggie had heard it too. She dropped the rock and it thudded in the sand.

"Where the hell have you been?" she asked.

Brent's eyes weren't focusing very well. He looked over to his side and saw Lucy standing there, but there was something wrong with the image. She wasn't wearing her leg braces, he could see that much. Well, no, of course not - he'd seen them, they were twisted out of shape and one of them was broken. But Lucy couldn't stand like that without the braces. Her legs were different lengths - she should only be able to balance precariously on one foot. Instead she was standing in a classic fighting stance, her feet braced against the ground.

There was something else weird about her, too. She looked kind of... well, green. Green light was flickering on her shoulders and the top of her head. It disappeared as he watched it. His eyes were starting to reshape themselves, to heal from the injuries Maggie had given him. He could see a little better now.

"I got tired of being a hostage," Lucy said. "When you tied me up, you wrapped that wire around my leg braces. It was easy enough to slip out of them, though I think I might have messed them up a little."

"No," Maggie said. "Tell me you didn't."

Didn't what? Brent wondered.

"I had to crawl, but that was alright, it wasn't - " Lucy's mouth twisted in a nasty grimace. "Wasn't - wasn't far. Excuse me for - for a second." Then she reached into her own mouth and grabbed something. She pulled it out with a grunt. A double length of wire with assorted bits of hardware dangling from it.

No way, Brent thought. She just pulled out her own braces!

"I think my teeth just fixed themselves," Lucy said. "That felt... weird."

"You did," Maggie said, sounding horrified.

"Uh huh," Lucy told her. She dropped the twisted bits of wire on the ground and then wiped her hand on the leg of her jeans. "I did."