Siegfried left me speechless.

Where was I during his op at the BioBank? In his mind, he said. Mine was running on adrenaline, giving raging power to my thoughts but with the stealth of an electric car.

"You had just fixed my motorbike," he started to explain as if he needed to tell his side of the story – or else, he'd burst. "You didn't even ask for anything in return – besides trusting you and your skills. You looked mesmerising in your comfort zone, that is, fixing the bike. I was thunderstruck at first because I thought you were bluffing. No girls or women have ever devoted themselves to such a job on account of clone laws. But you definitely knew what you were doing. I felt so lucky! Like I had found a needle in a haystack!"

He chuckled once, and proceeded with his tale:

"I knew I'd never be able to forget your face. At that moment, I knew that, without your help, I would've been doomed. I would've arrived late or not at all. Your help was providential!"

His tone of voice and body language danced together in perfect synchronicity, telling me he had felt like the luckiest guy in the world.

"After I left Dam Road, the only thing I could think of was you. How grateful I felt. How my faith in the divine had been restored on account of having met you. My life had become a sad tale, full of misery and suffering. I wanted my job as a rebel to mean something, to put an end to clone tyranny, to become a hero – or die trying. As I rode to Victoria Square, I thought about it all, feeling stronger and more determined than ever. All because of you."

"So, you were engrossed in a fantasy about feeling grateful for what I did to help you... and that's bad?"

"In a way." He sighed, closing his eyes as if he was hurting. "Agape was supervising the op from the control room in Amanita's basement with the rest of the group but for Gabi, who was in charge of blowing up the GSNS while my target was the BioBank. All of them but Gabi saw my thoughts, my emotions, my every move on Agape's screens. That's why they're mad at you."

"OK, fine. I distracted you for some minutes, I guess," I replied casually. "Guilty as charged. But why did you miss the shot? Really. 'Cos I don't get it."

"I failed because... I had never seen the fifteen-year-old kid I was meant to murder. Agape showed me no photo. She said it would be a piece of cake since he'd be easy to spot. The only donor that suited the President's needs would be a teenager surrounded by clone elite soldiers and doctors going out of the BioBank. There could only be one, and my aim is enviable. So, I could not fail."

He smiled briefly as if he was mocking himself for being stupid.

"I never thought, not even for a second, that I could actually fuck it all up. When the time had come, I saw all of them coming out of the BioBank, already broken and in flames, in a hurry to get onto the President's helicopter. That's when I saw him – Daniel."

He took a moment to breathe in and out. Reliving that afternoon was causing him great pain.

"I saw his face through the scope – and froze. His face turned into yours for a second. Why did you have to look so alike, your brother and you, Daphne?! I couldn't believe it!"

He was finding it hard to go on, but I didn't attempt to interrupt him. He was so close to telling me everything I needed to know.

"I froze for some precious seconds, staring at such a terror-stricken face that resembled yours to an unbelievable degree... that I let my target go. I couldn't find it in my heart to shoot. There was only one thought in my mind: the fact that you were related – closely related. It was the only explanation. I could only feel the pain that you would've felt in knowing that the teen had got murdered in cold blood by a sniper, me, only as a part of a large-scale plan to dethrone the clones and get rid of them all to save all traditional humans. He had to pay with his life, and so would've you with your suffering, Daphne. And you had helped me to get there in time to do it by fixing my bike. So, I froze... and I failed."

Oh, dear. He was right. I was oblivious to his personal story while I was fixing his bike, but later I had realised it all. Yes, I had helped the guy who was meant to kill my brother.

"But you didn't even know me," I added, worried. It stood from the sofa and came closer to him. "I mean, we weren't friends then. We were in Dam Road for what? Five minutes tops? You didn't even know my name or where I lived – and I didn't know anything personal about you either. How come you cared that much? I would've never known it had been you if it hadn't been for what happened AFTER you failed the shot and I found you."

"Don't you get it?!" he exclaimed, madder at himself than me.

"Look, meeting you in Dam Road was providential, sure. But meeting later because I had spotted you in that large trash bin was an accident. I would've never got my nanochip hacked or even known you if it hadn't been for that."

My logic didn't seem to sink in in his mind.

"Yes, you would've known," he confessed intensely, giving me the impression that he wasn't done and that only the worst was to come.

"How?! Did you want to come to my house to tell me that you had been ordered to shoot my brother and that you were sorry?!" I scoffed. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"No," he replied with vehemence as he took a couple of steps toward me, getting a lot closer to me.

His voice became a bittersweet symphony about regret and dreams broken into smithereens.

"I wanted to become a hero. While I rode to Victoria Square, I fantasised about the idea that I'd be welcomed in every neighbourhood in Thalis, in every city around the world, as one of the rebels who had dared to stop the clone tyranny – including yours, the Dam. Once this nightmare would've been over, I wanted to look for you to tell you what I had done to save the world, and that it wouldn't have been possible if it hadn't been for your generosity that afternoon, on Dam Road. I wanted to thank you for it... but tell me:"

He made a brief pause and his eyes became feral, which sent a cold shiver down my spine.

"Tell me: what would've been the expression on your face if I had come to thank you for allowing me to save the world when that kid, presumably a close relative of yours, had had to die by my hands? You would've told me he was your dear younger brother, and you would've loved to kill me, wouldn't you?"

I froze. I felt tears threatening to wet my eyelashes.

"Exactly. I would've hurt you SO MUCH."

He was right, and he proceeded to give me a vivid picture of what he had imagined:

"I could picture the crowds cheering my name in the same way they do it in the Sports Palace when I score a goal. I could already see my name written in history books. I could see the brighter future Agape had promised me. But I couldn't see the joy on your face when my moment would have come. Basically, I'd have to say: 'Thank you, Daphne, for fixing my bike and, thus, allowing me to murder your dear brother. Let's celebrate!'" He chuckled darkly. "What kind of gratitude is that?!"

"Fate is a sarcastic bitch... I guess," I whispered in a frail voice.

"My teammates saw it all that afternoon on Agape's screens. Everything. Meeting you. How grateful I felt. My plans to look for you in the future when the war would already be over to... to..."

He hesitated, stopped, and blushed.

"To what?" I whispered.

Then, he leaned closer to me, so much so that his face had never been that close to mine. I could feel his soft, warm breath on my face. His nose almost touched mine. His eyes were aflame with power surging from deep within him, mixing his suffering with something sweeter I couldn't quite grasp yet.

"To tell you that I had fallen in love with you," he whispered delicately, but his words became like a burning coal in the hearth of my heart.

I blushed as I had never blushed before in my entire life. I couldn't believe it: he had fantasied over a happy ending to his sad, personal tale like a cute, little girl dreaming about a fairy tale wedding – and that was why he had been distracted, that was why his colleagues hated me so much.

Murdering my brother automatically meant losing his chance at courting me later.

"But there's only one thing that's even worse than all the shit we've been through."

"What is?" I whispered naively.

"I hate myself. A lot. Because I've become just like the clones who had come to my home when I was seven."

He sighed.

"I am a destroyer of lives. You said so yourself after meeting Agape for the first time, on our first argument standing at Dawn's promenade. I am not a hero. I shall never be a hero. Every time I've seen you suffer, I know I'm the one responsible for it. I am ruining your life. Shooting your brother or not shooting him – it didn't matter. No matter what I do or say, you're in pain, you get in trouble, more and more as days go by. You got wounded during the police raid in the Sports Palace to spare me. Every time I listen to you speaking about what you think is right, I want to kill myself because I'm the one who got you involved in this issue. Every time you've looked at me and feared me because of who I am and what I do -yes, I've noticed it-, I'd love to put you on a ship and send you far away from me once and for all. You are being forced to endure a life that you don't want – after the speech you've just given to the others, I can clearly see it. Whose fault is that, huh? Mine."

He chuckled hysterically.

"If we had never met, there wouldn't be a countdown on your life for next Wednesday – and that's my fault too. Who does that to the person they love?"

He seemed to be done confessing the secret that had been eating him away inside out. He turned around, grunted like a wild animal, and kicked the wooden bar with much more strength than before. I heard glasses and bottles falling and breaking behind the bar.

"I'm no hero. I'm just a fucking twat, that's what!" he exclaimed in self-mockery.

I didn't know how to answer all that. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever been told, and yet it was also the most horrible. I felt torn but glad to know the truth. While the sweet and sour scent of different kinds of alcohol got mixed and travelled through the air around us, I looked into his eyes with pity.

"No, don't you dare to look at me with those eyes! I don't deserve that from you. You should hate me."

I took a step closer to him. But according to his body language, he seemed to reject my closeness.

"Daphne, I don't deserve to have met you. I didn't deserve your help that afternoon. And I definitely don't deserve to spend these last few days with you. You're wasting your time with me. Just go. I don't deserve to be happy, ever, not even now that my life is almost over."

"Now, don't say that, Siegfried."

"Don't call me Siegfried!" he yelled as if he was losing it.

I yelped because he startled me. Then, he went on softer thus:

"I hate it. It drives me nuts. It reminds me of my days on the farm." He made a brief pause to breathe in and out. "I've been meaning to tell you, but... I don't deserve you to call me by a nickname that I love. I got it when I first met the guys. It means a lot to me. A new life."

"Please, tell me that you're done feeling self-pity and regret. I can't take it anymore," I replied with exhaustion.

"Fine, I'm done," he whispered, bitter towards himself while clenching his fists.

I could tell that he wanted to punish himself; however, I sensed that it would never be enough. One thing was crystal clear to me, though: I wanted him to stop suffering at all costs. Starting right then.

Despite everything that had happened and that would probably happen, I admitted to myself that I cared for him. I trusted him with my life, actually, no matter what fate had chosen to do to us. I wanted to let him know that.

Was I forgiving and forgetting that he was a murderer? No, of course not. He believed that vengeance and justice were the same thing. I didn't. But my love for him ran deeper than that, and I could tell that his love for me did too. Even though there was no ideological space for me in his life the way it was, and that I believed there could be more than just rebellion and murder in his life, I wanted to be in it – if he'd let me.

He was attractive in more ways than one. His smile could be bewitching, he was amazing with the children, a god in the roller hockey court, and really protective of me – and gorgeous. I sighed while I stared at him in silence, wondering how to let him know how I felt about him and what he had just told me.

I had never met anyone like him, and he had never met anyone like me. I felt the invisible magnetic field that pulled us to one another. If we weren't meant to die in a few days, I didn't think I'd stare at him with hooded eyes, tiptoeing and putting my arms around his neck the way I was doing right then. He froze.

"Very well, then," I whispered sadly but with tenderness. "Now, shut up, and let me make my point, Sigi."

His nickname had a delightful ring to it when it came from my lips. But that wasn't what made him stare at my lips with lust, but the soft kiss that mine placed on his.

It was brief and chaste. I had taken him by surprise. Did I make my point? His pupils widened with desire as an automatic reaction triggered by the biological imperative ruling over us, inside us. I guess I did.

"Fuck it," he whispered with resolve.

Having said that, he bent over me and responded to my chaste kiss with a fierce and hungry one of his own.

I had never felt anything like it. I closed my eyes. With a kiss, he had the power to melt everything inside me, including my thoughts. But he also had got the power to freeze everything around us, like time and space.

Unaware of my own hands, I felt them caressing both his cheeks. In the meantime, he had grabbed my waist with a hand and my nape with the other. He deepened the kiss. He did so greedily as if he'd never let me go.

A dark cloud must've crossed his train of thought because he stopped all of a sudden but didn't part from my lips. Was he fighting with himself again?

When I opened my eyes and slowly parted my lips from his, I was greeted by an ogling stare on his behalf. Next, he raised his right hand to put a rebel lock behind my ear, stopped right there for a second and swallowed once.

Eventually, he hugged me even tighter than before, lifted me into the air, and made my back crash against the nearest wall. Then, he proceeded with his lustful onslaught on my lips.

In little time both of us were already breathing hard. I put both my hands softly on either side of his neck.

Not long after that, I felt a couple of playful fingers tracing a delirious path down my hips and the length of my left thigh until he lifted my leg, holding my knee at the height of his hips. Tracing the way back up was easy, and he took his time to do it while we kissed. When those lustful travellers reached the waist of my jeans, they hesitated for a couple of seconds.

He slowed the hopelessness of our kiss until he softly parted from my lips. His long fringe danced on the skin of my face, and it tickled.

Next, his head dived into the crook of my neck. I heard and felt him breathe in and out consciously, and then he made the tip of his nose slowly slide up from the crook to the back of my ear. The touch was gentle yet electrifying. I gasped. A second later, he softly bit the most tender area of my neck, only to reap a weak moan from my lips as a trophy. My cheeks were hotter than the asphalt under the cruel care of the summer sun.

When the tips of his wandering fingers had seemed to get lost, they got back on track, caressing the exposed skin between the waist of my jeans and the lower seam of my top. His fingertips sank into my skin as if he wanted to merge with me. The heat emanating from both his hands and all his fingers on my waist was matching my own. My blood felt like lava, sweetly scorching all of me from the inside.

I had never felt so weak and aching for more in my entire life. Will had set sail on a cruise, my brain seemed to be closed for the holidays, and my resolve not to get a boyfriend was just an empty space on the shelves in the library of my thoughts.

Sigi had changed it all.

When I felt his hands starting to go up beneath my top, I felt a soft air flow passing my legs, and I opened my eyes. My body tensed all of a sudden, and I gasped. I put both my hands on his chest, trying to part from him. We had company – a baffled one.

"Sigi, dude!" Gabi exclaimed with bewilderment and envy as he stepped into the cellar's hall right beside Taro and Sven. "Motherfucker! You're a fucking genius! You've got to tell me how you've managed to do this. I just tried to hook up with Agape, but she's just given me the middle finger!"

"I can't believe it, Sigi," Taro said, outraged. "What 'meditation technique' is this, huh?!"

"So, you're screwing us as much as you've been screwing her, I guess," Sven added in the same mood as Taro. "The mole, no less."

"She's not the mole, you idiots?!" Sigi yelled back, shielding me behind him. "You're losing it on account of losing Ray and Momo's paranoia! You're wasting your time by targeting Daphne!"

"You were also wasting your time, Sigi."

"Shut up, Taro." His voice sounded like a wolfish grunt. But he managed to speak in a much more collected manner thus: "Gabi, take Daphne to her bike and make sure nothing happens to her, please."

"OK," Gabi whispered back seriously.

Before I could say anything, Sigi turned to me and whispered close to my right ear thus:

"I'm gonna find the mole no matter what. You just... focus on saving us from getting caught at the check-ups." And then, he added with unfulfilled desire: "Come up with a brilliant idea – or else we're not done here, you and I."

Hello, my sugar cubes!

Steamy, right? How was it? ;P

Stay tuned to know more! 

XOXO

MS