The time had come. I could feel the weight of love, sadness, and loss from everybody in the room, wrecking my soul.

That Friday night, we were all gathered in the dining room to celebrate Daniel's candle and pay our last respects to him. I got a quick change of clothes and washed and dried my hair, wet and dirty due to the acid rain.

We had no close relatives because both our father and mother had been only children, so there were only a few distant relatives from my mother's side present, some close friends of Daniel, and Chloé, apart from my father and me. We must have been about thirty people in that old dining room with cracked walls and old-fashioned furniture.

As usual on such occasions, the room was left in the dark except for a single candle in the middle of the table. My father had lighted it. We were all sitting in a circle around it.

Chloé sat on my left and caught me by surprise when she softly grabbed my hand, the one I had got hurt at the Sports Palace. She was tense, as much as I was. I stared at her in silence, but she didn't dare look back at me. She was focused on some distant thought.

"Thank you so much for being here tonight," my father began in a voice that tried to be as neutral as possible, but he was failing at it. He was standing in front of the table, facing all of us, while the pale, yellowish light of the candle showered his face from below. "As you know, yesterday afternoon, during the attack at the BioBank, Daniel was killed."

Fortunately, my father did not know the truth: Daniel had been taken alive from the BioBank. Our father knew the story about the need to perform an urgent transplant for someone important, but that was it. Neither the cops nor I had told him any details about who that person was or whether the transplant had even taken place, obviously. Only the President, his closest circle, Amanita's rebels, and I knew the truth about it. The less my father knew, the better.

"We are gathered here tonight to remember Daniel," he continued with a sadness that grew like a snowball rolling down the mountain, getting bigger and bigger. "My son was only fifteen years old, but he enjoyed an intense and good life, thanks to your company. Thank you, all of you. Now, each of us will tell a story about him that we want to remember. I will start, and we will continue in a clockwise direction."

He made a brief pause, took a deep breath, and began to tell a story.

"When Daniel was little," he said in a sweet and deep honey-like voice, "he still didn't speak clearly, but he always listened to his sister and imitated her. He followed her everywhere. Sometimes I think that he felt that fierce passion for engines and fixing things exclusively on account of Daphne."

Then, she turned his face towards me. His smile was sad, his eyes were cloudy.

"She had always been the sun of his days and the moon of his nights, especially after losing their mother." His voice echoed the golden sunlight of days long gone.

With that comment, a lump formed in his throat, but that didn't stop him from going on.

"Without Daphne, Daniel wouldn't have been who he is... was, and what he was like."

That was a hard truth. We were physically alike, with almost the same facial traits, but even our preferences and personalities matched to an insanely lovely degree. We were even able to finish each other's sentences.

"I remember one night," my father went on with a dreamy voice, "I was scolding them for reading books on car mechanics past bedtime. They went on reading in the light of a small lantern, obviously."

He chuckled once with nostalgia.

"They couldn't shut up. I could hear them. They were having so much fun that I didn't want to scold them again. That night they were discussing who would be the boss of the garage they wanted to set up together."

Oh, yes. I clearly remember that night.

"Daphne complained, with wounded pride, that the boss had to be her because she was older. They were only thirteen and nine years old at the time. Then, Daniel told her that he would be the boss because he would study more than her and be better than her."

At that point, our guests were smiling tenderly. Our sibling-like spurring had always had that effect on other people.

"From then on, they started a 'mending stuff' war, which consisted of who fixed more old, broken gadgets. The house was overrun by faulty appliances from neighbours and friends. Unfortunately, my radio was also one of the innocent victims of that fervour." He sighed tenderly. "It broke just as Daphne and he were in a tie at the end of a hard and long week – for me, of course."

He let out a soft, lovely chuckle.

"In the end, Daniel was getting a massive headache, and he couldn't fix the radio on his own. Daphne offered to help him – but she asked in return to be the winner of the competition. Daniel agreed. Because he loved her. He had always supported his sister in her career choice, allowing her to shine."

He made a brief pause, only to look at me with all the love in the world.

"He loved you very much. I could be wrong, my sugar cube, but I think you could've let him win that day, like... like when you played dominoes, for example."

He smiled bittersweetly at me. I smiled back at him with teary eyes and nodded briefly.

"Well, that's it. Now it's my daughter's turn," he said, and then sat down beside me.

My moment had arrived.

It was a moment I hated with all my heart because I couldn't bear to talk about Daniel. Opening up about how I felt about losing my brother and missing him with all my heart in front of people who knew me was something that I feared that I would be unable to do.

True, I found the candle ritual to be emotional and appropriate to say farewell to a loved one, especially because we had no right to have cemeteries or bury our family and friends anywhere. But I couldn't bear it. It hurt too much, and all I wanted to do was run away from there and never stop running.

"Daphne, go ahead," my father said gently. "Get up, darling."

"Oh... Yes, yes," I whispered reluctantly. "Sorry."

The audience was staring at me as I got up from my chair, all with teary eyes and a desire to die themselves. Chloé let go of my hand.

"I don't want to talk too much, to be honest," I began in a calm voice, admitting the truth. "Sometimes I think less is more, so I'll be brief."

I coughed only to clear my throat. And my thoughts.

"You all know that my brother and I wanted to become mechanics. He was key to being able to fulfil that dream," I said with a sad voice. "Sometimes, I think he had more willpower than I did. We competed to see who spent more hours awake studying at night, as dad has just said, to see who knew more, or to see who fixed more things for friends and neighbours. I'm sorry we annoyed you, dad."

He smiled at me for a second.

"The case of Frankie's creation was special for us. This is the story I want to tell you tonight." I paused briefly and tried to smile as I dived into my memories. "One of our neighbours died childless a few years ago, Klaus de la Vega. He had an old motorbike that he never used. We were surprised that Klaus came to visit us the day before his forty-fifth birthday to give it to us as a present. Our happy faces must have filled his hours of insomnia just before its final medical examination and euthanasia in the BioSolutions Centre."

The air around us felt suddenly chillier at the mere mention of euthanasia, but I went on.

"When we offered to accompany him to the BioSolutions Centre the next day, he said no. We felt so sorry for him... Even though we weren't family, we had always enjoyed his friendship. I don't think I'm wrong in saying that he considered us to be his children in a way, even if we were just neighbours."

I sighed and resumed my story about Frankie.

"A few days after celebrating Klaus' candle, Daniel wanted to check on the condition of the bike he had given us. It was dusty and rusty, and it was so old that it must have belonged to his parents, probably.

"We stripped it into parts. The only part we could save was the overall structure. The rest was too damaged, we melted or reused the material for other things. Then, it occurred to Daniel that we could collect the missing pieces from other dead bikes and put them together. In the end, it became another competition of ours."

I chuckled, and I could see some people shedding tears already, but holding their sobs down their throats. That was dangerous for me, because I got easily sensitive when I saw people cry, and ended up crying too.

"We fought to see who brought more pieces and which had the best quality. A few months later, Frankie was already complete, and we christened her as such in honour of Victor Frankenstein. I think Klaus would have been proud of Frankie, as Daniel and I were. We kept the original, retro look. We argued about who was gonna drive her and when, since we had to share. He could be such a..."

I couldn't go on. I had got a lump in my throat. I wanted to let go and cry my eyes out, but I was too stubborn to do it in front of everyone.

"Well, the thing is... that both of us... we wanted to brag about her in front of everyone. Anyway," I said trying to wrap it up and finish. It hadn't gone as badly as I thought, "Frankie, she was our greatest achievement. That's all. Now it's Chloé's turn."

When I finished, I realised that it had been a good contribution.

But perhaps the most shocking story involving Daniel would have been telling my audience the real reason why he died. The transplant for the President. And how I had met and helped the one person who was meant to assassinate my brother that afternoon before his liver and kidneys were given to the President. Siegfried.

Even more shocking would've been telling them that I had fixed that terrorist's broken bike without even knowing who that stranger was and his intentions. Also that, for some reason that still eluded me, the guy had missed the shot that would have killed my brother just at the last second before they had taken him away to sacrifice him so that the President would get Daniel's organs.

That story, however, would never see the light of day.

A loud knock on the front door startled all of us.

"Who can it be?" my father asked in genuine surprise. "I thought we were all here. Is anyone missing?"

No one answered. Everyone was just as shocked.

"I'm gonna see who it is, Dad," I said getting up and going to the front door.

It was raining heavily outside. I was wondering who it might be at that late hour. The look on my face froze when I opened the door and saw the person standing before me.

"Good night. Is this Daniel Peneus' house?"

Before me stood a clone government civil servant, a fat man in his late sixties, with a grey, thick moustache, formally dressed up and accompanied by six also formally dressed, tough-looking bodyguards. They were the most impressive, muscular men I had ever seen.

One of them was holding an umbrella over the old, fat civil servant, and another was carrying a large bouquet of red roses which smelt like heaven. All the bodyguards carried guns. They were getting wet in the rain, but they didn't seem to care much.

"Daphne!" my father called me from behind me with panic and urgency when he saw who our new guests were.

I heard his rushed footsteps running towards me. He immediately pulled me away from the front door and addressed the civil servant, making sure I'd stay behind him.

"Yes, this is the Peneus' household," he replied formally, but his voice was shaking a little. "We're in the middle of something important. What do you want?"

"Good night, Mr Peneus," the civil servant replied with a grave voice and haughtily. "You must be his father. I am pleased to give you these flowers as a sign of gratitude from the President."

Having said that, the bodyguard who was holding the bouquet handed it to my father, who grabbed it without saying a word, still thunderstruck by that strange, formal visit from clone authorities.

It was a huge bouquet of blood-red roses, wet from the acid rain. Some little droplets were already eating out the soft, red, velvety petals with their corrosive acid, making the deep red become a dark, ash-like colour. My father, out of astonishment, had not invited them to come in, although I would not have done so under any circumstances, despite the acid rain.

"Thanks?" my father asked them, completely astonished. "From the President? Why?"

"The police agents who talked to you yesterday weren't properly informed of the situation. I'm awfully sorry for that."

The fat civil servant cleared his throat and pulled a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Our street had the odd, nauseating perfume of rotting eggs and dirt. I guessed he didn't like it.

"Your son Daniel was the only donor who was compatible with our beloved President. He needed an emergency transplant yesterday, and your son, Mr Peneus, saved his life."

Hello, my sugar cubes!

Oh-oh. This fat civil servant has just spilt the beans about Daniel's real cause of death. What's gonna happen next?

XOXO

MS