"Mary, was there anyone on the project who went by the name Joe Black?"
She frowned. "Not that I remember. But then, I didn't know everyone on the project, because I was basically confined to the nursery and housing areas. Nor did I know all the secret names you two called yourselves. Only some."
"Can you remember the other names?"
She frowned. "Not really. I only remember Josephine and Joshua because that's the names you used most often."
"What about Sethanon? Is that one of them? Or maybe the name of someone who worked there?"
"Sethanon?" Her frowned deepened. "I don't think there wasn't anyone on the project called that. It's such an odd name that surely I'd remember it. But Joshua got caught reading a book by that name, I'm sure."
A chill went through her. "Sethanon is a book title?"
"Yeah. I caught him reading it well before they did, and I warned him, I did. But he took no notice."
"So we weren't allowed to read fiction?"
"No. Only what they gave you. On technologies, weapons, stuff like that." She shrugged. "No one ever knew how he got that book. When they took it off him, he got mad." She looked away again. "Joshua would never have hurt me, I knew that, but that day I was afraid. And not just of him, but both of you."
She raised her eyebrows. "Why both of us?"
Mary's gaze came back to Sam's. "Because separately you were powerful, but together—I swear Heaven and Earth trembled in fear of your wrath that day."
She swallowed heavily, but didn't ask what had happened.
Right now, she really didn't want to know. It was enough to know that she was not what she'd presumed—and that the past she'd spent most of her remembered life trying to uncover was one better left alone. And yet, now that she'd started down the path of remembering, there was no turning back.
The military and their rising level of interest in her ensured that, if nothing else.
Besides, the dreams were becoming relentless.
Remembering was something being forced on her, whether she wanted it or not.
"If we were so powerful, Mary, how did they ever restrain us?"
Her smile was grim. "Simply by placing special pellets under your skins, and threatening the death of one if the other did anything out of place."
She remembered the dream of her and Joshua running up a slope on a moonless night. Remembered the promise he'd made as fire danced across his fingertips that soon they would have their revenge and be free.
He'd obviously found a way to remove the pellets and fulfill that promise.
"How did you escape the fire that destroyed the project, Mary?"
"I don't know." She frowned. "There was an explosion, and heat—horrible heat—and the next thing I remember I was outside on this grassy slope." She rubbed her arms. "I think an angel saved me that day. I should have died with the rest of them. The nursery was the second place the fire hit."
"And the first?"
"The arena where they used to train you both."
Something in the way she said that scratched Sam's instincts. "The both of us? What about the others?"
"There were no others. Not in…" she hesitated, and rubbed her forehead. "It still hurts if I try to say the name. Joshua told me it wouldn't."
Sam lightly squeezed the older woman's free hand. "You don't need to say the name, Mary. I know the project." She hesitated. "So, Joshua and I were the only ones in that project?"
Mary nodded. "There were others bred. Lots of others.
But none of them survived past the toddler years. No one knew why. But I reckon it was because you were twins. You had each other, and you took care of each other. The other little ones had no one but themselves."