I pulled down on my sleeves, but Nat slapped my hands and made me stop. I just rolled my eyes at her and pulled down on them again.

"Nathan, seriously," she muttered. "You're ruining all the sleeves on your shirts by doing that."

They could just make longer sleeves.

We were the first ones to arrive for class. Birdie was with us but had chosen to stay in the back of the room.

My leg started bouncing, and I was really nervous. Everybody knew who we were. At least Nat's picture hadn't been on the world news. Being the second feral to be released was not nearly as interesting as being the first, apparently.

I took a deep breath to try and calm down my nerves.

At least she wasn't famous, and that was good. We were obviously twins, so it was only a matter of time before people started asking questions.

Carlos dragged his feet into the room followed by his supervisor. The supervisor nodded to Birdie and joined him in the back. Carlos dropped down in the seat next to mine.
"I hate mornings," he muttered and rubbed his eyes.

He was a year older than me and Nat. We liked him the best out of all the people in the programme. He came from the prison in Los Angeles, so he had been very easy to get out in comparison to us. He was a registered feral, but he didn't seem feral at all. He liked to read and always had his nose buried in a book. He was very intelligent and seemed extremely bored by this entire arrangement.

"At least the food is better here," Nat said and leaned back in her chair.

"Amen to that. We got this weird brown thing for every meal. Not for human consumption," Carlos muttered.

"We got grey porridge for breakfast and for lunch and dinner we got a brown porridge. But that was in Scotland. In Ireland the food was okay. Sometimes we got fruit."

Nat snorted, and Carlos looked a bit jealous. More kids started filling up the classroom sending nervous glances at us.

"They could just take a picture. Then they could stare at us even when they're at home," Nat said loud enough for the people around us to hear.

"Or google Nathan, he's everywhere on the internet," Carlos said and smiled calmly to a girl who kept glancing at us.

Birdie squatted down behind us, his arms resting on the backrest of our chairs. "You guys doing okay?"

"Oh yeah, I'm loving this. It's fantastic. Absolutely mind-blowing. Simply astounding," Nat groaned sarcastically.

"Nice wording," Birdie snorted and went back to his spot next to Carlos' supervisor.

I pulled my sleeves over my hands and kind of wanted to sink into the ground. That was until Rae walked in. She cracked a smile at me and sat down at the table in front of us. She turned in her seat and smiled even wider at me.

"Hey, fun to see you here," she said.

"Why is that?" Nat growled.

"Rae is a friend," I said. "Rae this is my sister, Nathalia."

Rae flicked her eyes over at Nat and smiled a bit. "Hello."

"Rae has a twin sister too," I said.

"Uh huh," Nat muttered, clearly already bored with the conversation.

I leaned forward, and Rae started talking about a new band, she had found. I gave her my phone, and she sent me a couple of their songs. Then a fish walked in, and everybody quieted down.

"Welcome back from the summer break," he said coolly. "This is introduction to biology. It's going to be tough for those of you, who's more interested in throwing punches rather than exercising your mind. But for those actually interested, this will be a great experience."

The class was extremely interesting. We got introduced to the different subjects we were going to cover, and human anatomy was there. I had spent so much time around doctors, I had actually gotten into it. I found myself very excited for the next class already.

Our next class made me less excited though. Combat training.

We were standing in the gym when a massive guy came walking in. Our trainer was a dog, but not a shifter.

Nat moved closer to me. We were both wearing sportswear, though I was wearing a jumper over the short sleeved t-shirt. I was so not interested in showing off my arms in here. Definitely not gonna be something I'd do.

"Right," the trainer said and looked around. We were about 15 people. Nat and I were the only ones from the programme. "You had a good break? I truly hope so; otherwise, you will break." He looked around again and stopped when he reached me. "Mr Creed are you cold?"

I clenched my jaw. Birdie had said it would be okay to just keep the jumper on. I still hadn't shown Nat my arms.

I looked back at Birdie. He wasn't allowed to interfere unless I was a danger to my fellow students.

"Was that a hard question to answer?" the trainer tipped his head to the side.

"No," I replied.

"Then why didn't you answer? I'll give you another chance then. Are you cold?"

"No," I repeated.

"Then why are you wearing a hoodie in my gym? Are you afraid you won't break a sweat?"

"No."

Nat glanced up at me. She could feel the tension build up in me.

"Then take it off, and we can start training."

"No."

"What?"

"No." I wasn't backing down from this because of his stupid rule. Fighting had nothing to do with what you were wearing. He was doing this to be an asshole.

"Nathan," Nat muttered and frowned at me.

"No?"

He stalked towards me, but I had fought bigger assholes than him before. And I was calm. There was nothing he could do to get me in trouble. I wasn't going to let him provoke me, even as he towered over me.

"Do it, or I'll exclude you from the class, meaning you get kicked out of the programme and back to a nice and cosy cell."

Fuck.

I kept looking the trainer in the eye, as I slowly removed it and exposed the numerous scars on my arms. The surgical scars were still ugly and far from healed. It felt like they just got a bit more obvious in the white light of the gym.

Several people gasped. They actually gasped. Nat tensed up next to me, her fists clenched. If a look could kill, the trainer would be double dead.

He sent me a smirk and walked back to where he started the class. I kept staring him down.

"Pair up, kids," the trainer said.

I ended up with this massive blond bug who kept staring at my arms.

"That looks nasty," he said quietly.

I didn't say anything back. He fell into the stance, Birdie had taught me, but I didn't bother. I was over this shit. He charged towards me, but I just stepped to the side. This kid was slow. He kept trying to punch me in the face, but I was faster than him.

"Fight back!" he growled frustratedly.

I stuck my leg out when he lunged forward again and tripped him. He fell down on his face.
"That looked nasty," I said in the same way he had said it.

"Mr Creed," the trainer said behind me. I turned towards him and tipped my chin up a bit. "What do you call that move?"

"In Ireland, we call it tripping somebody," I replied. Nat snorted loudly and smirked at me.

"Fine, everybody come here. Since Mr Creed here refuses to fight properly and instead wants to fight like a felon, I think we should teach him a little lesson. Everybody who has received training prior to this class, please. Show Mr Creed how we fight in America."

"I'm not fighting a bunch of kids," I said calmly.

The trainer whirled around and shot me an angry look.

"Do you want to fail this class?"

"No."

"Then you're fighting."

I took a deep breath and rolled my shoulders a bit. Fine. But I wasn't going to hurt them. They hadn't signed up for this.

A broad fish walked towards me, and I felt myself back up a bit. A fish. Hitting a fish. This could land me right back in prison.

I looked back at Birdie. He gave me a short nod. I was allowed to do this. I turned back to the fish. He favoured his left leg, and he was left-handed. That could throw somebody off if they fought like the trainer wanted. To me, it didn't matter.

The fish charged at me, and I dodged under his arms, ending up behind him. I shoved him down on the mat. First, win, and he didn't even get hurt.

The next one was a bird. None of these kids was shifters, so I don't know why the trainer thought they had a chance. Generally, shifters were just... Better. We had better instincts and senses, and we were stronger and faster. This wasn't fair. Especially because I couldn't give less of a shit about their rules in fighting.

The fight with the bird was over before it even started. She kept whirling around, trying to kick me with a bunch of fancy kicks, but I dodged them. She ended up tripping over her own two feet.

And then a massive dog stepped forward. Massive as in his muscles had muscles. The memory of the dogs in prison beating me up flashed before my eyes, and before I knew it, I had twisted his arm on his back and pressed his cheek down on the mat.

"Let go! You're breaking my arm!"

"I'm not. Because I have broken somebody's arm and it's not done like this." I let go of him, and he rose to his feet, rubbing his wrist.

It didn't take long until there was only a handful left. I hadn't seriously hurt anyone. Which was my point. None of them could fight for real. One girl shouted so loudly when I planted my elbow in her ribs, one could have thought I had broken them. I hadn't, it was more like a poke than an actual attack.

"This is fucking pointless," I growled and turned to the trainer, after just shoving another student down on the floor.

"Is it really, Mr Creed? I think my students are learning a valuable lesson here."

I crossed my arms over my chest. "They're not. They're learning to hate me because I can beat all of them. And you're encouraging it."

The trainer tipped his head back and laughed. "These kids have been training since they were 8 years old. If it truly came down to it, they could take you down."

"And people have tried to kill me since I was 5. These kids have never been in a real fight!" I threw my arm out towards them. "You care so much about proper stance, you completely forget this is about survival! Not a single feral is going to just sit down and wait for you to roundhouse kick them in the face. They're going for the kill every single time, and you should be too. This is playtime. This has nothing to do with actual fighting. You're all going to get killed."

"And how do you know that? You just arrived here, pal," the big dog said.

"Because when I didn't go for the kill, I ended up almost dead every time!" I lifted up my shirt and showed them the numerous scars on my stomach. "Ferals are ruthless, and they don't give a shit about who you are or how long you have trained! How is this so fucking hard to understand?!"

I turned back to the trainer and threw my arms out the sides, extremely frustrated. Nat walked up to me and handed me my jumper.

"And what does the other Creed think?" the trainer asked.

"I think he's right." She shrugged and looked around. "If you want to die, then keep doing what you're doing."

I pulled the sleeves on the jumper down to my hands. "Am I done here, or do you want me to do it again?" I asked flatly.

"No, Mr Creed. You can go," the trainer said with an amused tone. I started towards the door. Birdie followed us out and stopped us outside.

"Nathan, stop for a minute."

"This is bullshit! He did all that on purpose! What have I ever done to him?!" I growled loudly, earning some weird looks from people passing by.

"He did do it on purpose. All of it. He wanted everybody to see the scars because they could end up looking like you. They don't see the actual horror of what we're supposed to be fighting. They don't see it until the day they're facing down a feral, and that might be too late. You did them a favour today. Taught them an actual valuable lesson. Instructor Garth and I have talked about this several times, and we both agree; the training here is bullshit," Birdie said calmly.

"I am not a fucking show-and-tell project, Birdie. I'm an actual person, and I hadn't shown the scars to Nat yet. None of this was fair." I was furious. This was even worse than just beating up the kids inside that gym. They had planned it behind my back and once again shown me how little control I had over my own life.

"Nathan, I don't give a shit about your scars," Nat said and put her hands on her hips.

"But I do!" I yelled angrily. "I am desperately trying to prove I'm not feral, and how the fuck am I supposed to do that covered in scars? Beating up an entire class? If you just got me here to be feral, then why the fuck did you go through the trouble of convincing me I wasn't?!"

"Because you're not. This isn't a question of whether you are feral or not. You're not. You know that I know that. Nathalia knows that" Birdie said, still completely calm. That kind of punched a hole in my anger.

I ran my hand over my head and exhaled loudly.

"Don't pull that shit on me again," I muttered and shoved my hands in the pockets on my jumper.

"That is what you're here for, Nathan. Amongst other things. They want everybody to learn from somebody who has been around ferals. Why do you think we've been scouring the prisons around the world for people for the programme?"

"I thought we were here to fight ferals."

"You should know by now, you don't get all the information about your stay here."

I clenched my jaw. Nat wrapped her fingers around my wrist, but it didn't have the usual calming effect on me. Maybe because she was just as angry as I was. That wasn't a maybe. My animal reacted to hers, and it kept sending pulses of anger through my body.

"It's lunchtime. Che is taking over in the cafeteria, come on," Birdie was done explaining himself, and I was not getting more answers out of him. Nat kept her hands on my arm, and we walked together to the building housing the cafeteria.

"This is like every high school film ever made," Nat muttered and looked up at me. "Where will we sit? With the popular kids? The jocks?"

"We're sitting where ever we sit down," I replied less impressed by the situation. Che met us at the door and smirked at us.

"How was combat training?"

"Nathan made a bunch of new friends," Nat said with fake glee and let go of my arm.

"I bet! And then you all told each other your darkest secrets and braided each other's hair," Che replied with the same amount of fake happiness.

"How did you know? Were you spying on us?"

Both Birdie and I just got less and less impressed by their conversation.

"Siblings are weird."

"Smaller siblings are weird. I am 13 minutes older than her," I said and realised nobody had actually told me that. Nat caught my gaze and smiled at me.

"It's no fun if you start remembering stuff like that." She tried to sound mad, but she couldn't.

Whenever I remembered something about her, she got so happy. I think she was just devastated by the fact, that I had been able to forget her at all. Telling her hadn't been easy...

"Che, you got it from here?" Birdie asked tiredly.

"Yeah bro," Che said.

We left Birdie behind and walked into the cafeteria. We got food on trays much like prison, except we could choose from a wide range of different foods in the buffet. We sat down at an empty table. I grabbed the spoon and got a weird deja-vu feeling. Che glanced at me from across the table, and I put the spoon down.

"What's next?" Nat asked and took a bite of a very red apple.

"You have the rest of the day off. Nathan, we're going to work on your reading."

"Uh huh," Nat said and sent him a bland look. "Maybe I should help with that since whenever you two are alone, you don't do much studying."

Che smirked again, and I just sighed loudly. "We do study."

"Right." She drew out the word and didn't sound convinced at all. She put down the apple and went to war with her lasagne.

"So how was combat training really?" Che asked low enough so only Nat and I could hear him.

"The trainer wanted me to beat up all the kids..."

"So they got the same lesson as I got?"

"Pretty much..."

"It's all right, Nathan. They needed that lesson," Che said and smiled encouragingly. I looked down.

"I don't want them to see me like that..."

"Hey, you don't care what they think, remember?"

I nodded. He was right. As always he was right.

Somebody stopped at our table, and I looked up to find Carlos standing there.

"Can I sit here?" he asked. "Everybody else is staring at me, and I do find that most bothersome."

"Of course, mate," Nat said and nodded towards the spot next to me. She and Che were sitting on the same bench, so there was plenty of room next to me.

"Carlos, this is Che, our second supervisor."

"Well, Agent Chester Levy, but Che is fine." Che reached out his hand, and Carlos regarded it for a second before shaking it.

"You're very young for an agent," Carlos said thoughtfully.

"Some would say you're very young for an ex-con," Che shot back.

"Indeed," Carlos agreed and took a sip of his tea. He turned back to me. "What did you think of biology?"

"Really interesting," I said and smiled. "I can't wait to start for real."

"Ah, you like science?" I nodded. "I used to study science in school. Math and chemistry were my favourites."

"I like math. Numbers are easy."

"Well, for you maybe," Che said. "Don't ever play cards with him. He's counting them."

Carlos put down his cup. "And the plot thickens," he said and cracked a smile. "If only they would let us go to Vegas, then we would be rich before midnight."

"Or end up with our legs broken," Nat muttered and stabbed her lasagne to prove her point.

Che chuckled and looked up at me, probably remembering what I said about broken legs on the plane to the States. Easier to deal with a broken leg, because you just have to stay in bed, but a broken arm? You keep forgetting how much you actually need two arms. Like when you're cleaning floors. Or doing other stuff in the bathroom.

I scratched the back of my neck and bit down a smile.

"If you went to school and shit, how did you end up in prison?" Nat asked and tipped her head to the side. Carlos wiped his mouth with his napkin and looked calmly at her.

"I am, of course, completely innocent, but I allegedly robbed a couple of banks. Or thirteen on the west coast." He didn't look remotely innocent. He actually looked kind of proud.

"I heard it was only nine," Che said and narrowed his eyes.

Carlos flashed a crooked smile. "Was it? I forget..." He sent Nat a knowing look. She snorted and bit down on her fork, her full lips stretched into a smile.

Did she know how flirty she was, or was she just like this with everybody that wasn't me? Or Che for that matter?

They both treated each other as siblings. Constantly teasing each other, or one jumping in on the joke of the other. Nat easily adjusted her behaviour to suit those around her, forcing everybody to immediately like her. If she liked you, of course, otherwise she would make you feel like the most unwanted person in the world.

With me it was different. She was actually just herself around me. I suspected I was the only one she could be herself with. Maybe it was the same with me. I became cold around everybody who I knew hadn't been to prison, where I warmed up to Carlos right away. I knew people had certain ideas of how I was, and me being less than friendly would only prove them right.

I was pulled out of my train of thought by Rae. "Hey Nathan," she said and smiled. "Did you enjoy biology?"

"Yeah, it was good."

"I knew you would." She looked around the table before settling her eyes on me again. "Well, see you later." She repositioned her bag and kept walking.

"Somebody is very friendly, huh," Nat said and looked after Rae.

"She's harmless," Che said and patted Nat on the shoulder. "Weird, but harmless."

"At least she treats us like people," I muttered and returned my attention to my lunch.