"I can't keep going, Johnny." Hunter's voice came in a ragged gasp, his fingers shaking as he stared at the screen. Dressed in a tux and surrounded by the wealthiest of Europe, Jonathan seemed oblivious. He moved through the crowd without acknowledgment, drifting to the ornate staircase like the spies he would watch on TV.

"Please. I can't keep doing this..." Faint words drifting as he opened a door for Jonathan, then let him know where to find a key. Again, no response but the calculated movements of a thief.

"Just..." He gasped, choking on tears, violent, silent tears that tore him apart and left his stomach empty. "You're killing me."

Jonathan had moved away from the party and into the study. Silent as a ghost, he found his way behind the desk and moved a painting to reveal the most expensive safe they had ever laid eyes on.

It came like second nature to find the passcode for his brother, rattling off numbers as a gloved hand rested on the safe. Hunter let each syllable scorch his throat as if he had swallowed gasoline. It ribboned through him with each number, each turn of the safe...

"You're killing me!" He screamed into the headset, desperate and broken as a fire burned him. His fingers shook, stomach tossed and lips turned cold with icy gasps.

"You're killing me! Stop! Stop! I'm dying!"

Jonathan continued without a single pause, opening the safe to reveal a sapphire of priceless proportions. It glittered as he removed it, as he ignored Hunter's screaming, and as he spun around to face the two new faces in the room.

The Hart twins had followed them all the way to Europe, and even though Jonathan had beaten them, they wouldn't leave empty-handed.

"You're killing me!" He screamed without passion, without love or fear or pain. Only pure desperation as his health faded like dust in the wind.

Hunter watched with fingers frozen to the keyboard as the Hart Twins moved forward, smashing Jonathan to the ground in cold blood. Red spilled across the screen, bone-chilling screaming filling his ears.

Jonathan screamed for his life as a foot came down on his face, as the stone was wrenched from his hand, yet all Hunter could manage to do was scream.

A broken nose leaked red across the carpet, a shattered skull caved in at a brutal fist, and as the screaming disappeared, Hunter's death felt imminent. Cold ribbons of faded life ripped through him as final words escaped his lips.

"Johnny, you killed me...

~~~

Hunter woke with a start, cold sweat dripping down the back of his neck. The dreams were coming more frequent than ever. Sometimes awake and sometimes slipping through his unconscious mind, Jonathan died again and again through Hunter's neglect. Or even worse, Hunter would find himself stained in Jonathan's blood, gun of knife in hand.

He shut his eyes, counting seconds like fragile ideas and hoping time and time again that it was only a dream. Taking deep breaths as images of blood swarmed through his mind...

"Could you breathe any louder?" Jonathan hissed, forcing Hunter to accept reality. Snapping his eyes open, he sat up and drew his eyes to the desk. "You're gonna wake up mom and dad."

"What're you doing?" He mumbled as he took in the mess before him.

Hunched over the desk, Jonathan was lost over the trinkets sprawled on its surface. Screwdrivers, hand-drawn blueprints, nuts and bolts, and even an Exacto knife were shuffled through his hands as he tinkered.

"I have to update our gear for our trip to Europe," Jonathan answered with a pen clutched between his teeth and hands busy with a small disk. "I forgot we had to get them through metal detectors and on a plane."

"Hey, Johnny?"

"Uh huh."

"Maybe we..." he stumbled, each word catching on his guilt. "What if we didn't go to Europe?"

"Didn't go?" Jonathan stifled a laugh, hardly even raising his head as he busied himself with his work. "You mean after I begged mom and dad to take us there for spring break? After we altered all of our gear, researched the Serpent's sapphire, and recreated the Paeji Hotel's blueprints from nothing but stock photos? Thanks, but I think we're going."

"Johnny, I'm serious."

Jonathan paused over his work, eyes shifting with uncertainty as he thought. Hunter held his breath but he only returned to the project with a shake of his head.

"You've just got pre-robbery jitters." He stated, trying to convince himself more than Hunter. Pulling a bag of chips out of his desk, he threw them onto his bed with hardly a glance. "Here. Eat something. It might help with the nerves."

Hunter trembled as he stared at the bag. His stomach hurt at the sight of them, throat burned and mouth filled with the faint taste of vomit. With his dinner consisting of nothing more than a few bites of meatloaf, any food seemed like a time bomb wrapped in a bow.

"I um, I can't." Hunter swallowed his words with the bile, scraping his throat on the way down. Turning his eyes from the taunting food, he bit his lip, holding back the pain that gnawed at his stomach.

"Why?" Jonathan grinned as he picked up the exacto knife, carefully toying with the device in his hands. "Are you trying to lose weight or something?"

"Lose weight?" Hunter shook as he pushed himself up from the bed. With bare feet freezing on the ground, he narrowed his eyes as every thought of pain began to twist. Slowly building from frozen feet to the pit of an empty stomach, each lace of pain wove together into violent thoughts.

Jonathan was oblivious, too concentrated on his game to notice the pain Hunter was in. And as everything stirred into one violet pit of thoughts, Hunter's mind wove one more bloody idea. The only way to make Jonathan understand his pain was to force him through everything he went through.

"I've lost almost 15 pounds since you started this!"

His blood-curdling shouts drove Jonathan to look up from his work. His eyebrows raised in confusion, Hunter struggled to breathe as his brother's eyes dragged over his shriveled form, deteriorating mind, and raging eyes. Yet as Jonathan tended to work, he only saw what he wanted to and bit his lip angrily.

"Well, you don't need to get mad at me for it. And you look fine." Jonathan shrugged his shoulders and attempted to return to his work, but Hunter had felt too much pain. Raging and burning like a fire in an empty stomach, he hardly realized as he lunged for Jonathan's neck.