Beep! Beep! Beep!

My annoying alarm clock went off at exactly six o’clock in the morning. I groaned and rolled over, wishing that I could sleep in and miss school. I’d stayed up until two writing an anti- virus program for a particularly tricky virus.

Beep! Dang it, the thing never shut up, did it? I sat up and slammed my hand down on the snooze button, only intending to stop the alarm. Instead, I crushed the clock.

“Oh, not again,” I said to no one in particular.

“Isn’t that the fourth time?” an amused voice asked me.

I turned to glare at the teenage boy leaning against the door frame. “The odds against it were 104,372 to 1!” I replied, pissed off at the world in general.

“Devin”, as he was currently known, chuckled. “Guess you must just be unlucky.” He turned to leave, and added over his shoulder, “The bacon’s almost ready.”

I stared in the general direction of my bedroom door stupidly for half a second, which for me was an extremely long time. Then I muttered, “Cheater,” jumped out of bed, and raced down the hall to claim the best pieces.

Devin looked up, grinning, when I entered the kitchen. “4.7 seconds- a new record. I’ve got to try that more often.”

I slumped in my chair and stared at the frying pan, practically willing it to hurry up.

“I hope you made more, because I call everything in that pan,” I told him.

“Of course. I know how you pig out on bacon.”

I rolled my eyes, walked over to the stove, and kicked him. Or at least, I tried to. Devin leapt away from the kick, and instead my foot connected with the front of our oven. Unfortunately, unlike Devin’s leg, the oven door couldn’t take the force behind my kick. It buckled almost in half.

“Great job, Claire,” Devin told me from behind the safety of the kitchen table. I stared at the oven, gave an exasperated sigh, and decided it was probably better for me to stay out of the way today- it looked like my day for breaking things.

I stalked over to the table, sat down, and looked at Devin, who was still cowering on the other side. “It’s safe to come out now,” I informed him. He started walking around the table, still giving me a wide berth.

“You know, it’d be hilarious to film you acting so terrified of a girl,” I remarked offhandedly.

He smiled. “You’re not like other girls, though.” Which was a serious understatement, of course.

“The toast is done,” Devin said, yanking me out of my thoughts. “Here.” He threw a plate at me like a Frisbee. I snagged it in midair, and with my other hand caught the toast, which he’d thrown about a second after the plate. “I need a knife, you know,” I reminded him.

“And you can’t get it yourself because…” He left the sentence hanging.

“Because I’d probably damage the drawer, seeing how today is going,” I coolly answered.

“Fine.” He walked over to the silverware drawer, grabbed a steak knife, and threw it to me. Instantly I analyzed the velocity and rotation of the blade and determined the best time and place to grab it. I caught it and set it down next to my plate. “Thanks,” I told him.

“No prob,” he answered, turning his attention back to the bacon sizzling in the pan. I rolled my eyes for the second time that day- sometimes Devin was such a guy- and started cutting my toast into perfect sections. What can I say? I’m anal about stuff like that. Personally, I blame it on my programming.

Twelve eggs, twenty slices of bacon, and half a bowl of grits later, we were finished with breakfast. Devin took off on his daily run, and after I started the dishwasher, I went to my bathroom to brush my teeth.

When I entered, I studied myself in the mirror. Reddish-brown hair, brown eyes- it always felt strange to see a perfectly normal-looking human staring back at me. By now, you might have guessed that Devin and I aren’t your run-of-the-mill teens. You’d be right.

To make a very long story short, Devin and I were escapees from a top-secret government project called Android. We’re enhanced humans with fantastic reflexes, off-the-charts IQs, extremely dense muscles and bones (causing freakish superstrength, speed, and durability), and one more thing: a computer chip implanted in each of us, which gives us the processing speed, power, and memory of a supercomputer. We were designed to be the perfect mix of technology and evolution. Have you figured out why our project was called Android yet?

Our creators decided to use the pair of us as assassins. Why not? We were practically indestructible geniuses with the ability to hack into security cameras and erase our presence from the videos. What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Please note the sarcasm.

Unfortunately for the high-level government aides who saw us as nothing more than high-tech tools, the two of us had some things that they hadn’t programmed in and weren’t expecting.

Things like compassion, empathy, and mercy.

We were smart enough to pretend to cooperate, so both of us were skilled in hand-to-hand fighting, weaponry (including explosives), vehicular use, and hacking. In short, all that a pair of spies needs to know. However, when we were sent out on our first hit, we pulled a double-cross and ran. We’d been hiding here ever since. And because two unrelated sixteen-year-olds living alone stand out, we’d become fraternal twins, invented a globetrotting father who was never home, and enrolled in high school. Which my watch said would start in twenty minutes.

“Crap!” I muttered to myself. I’d wasted ten minutes lost in recollections. As I started brushing my teeth, I heard the back door slam. I listened to Devin walk into the hallway bathroom, there to start his traditional three-minute shower. Somehow- don’t ask me how- he was always ready to go by the time I was walking out the door. And according to my girl friends, his slightly damp hair in the morning only increased his hotness.

Whatever. Some people were just talented at procrastination. I wasn’t one of them.

I rinsed out my mouth, put away my toothbrush, and started packing my backpack with my various binders and textbooks. Sure enough, when I started walking down the hallway to our car, Devin popped up next to me. I took one look at him at him and stopped.

“You have got to be kidding me.” He was wearing the most mismatched outfit I had ever seen in my life. “You’re going to school like that?”

“We can’t all be color coded,” my blond haired, green eyed “twin” retorted.

I knew I would never win this fight. Devin was almost as stubborn as I was, and I didn’t have a lot of good arguments on my side. So I settled for shaking my head and resumed walking. “I guess you still blend somewhat.”

“Blend? With half the girls in our school hyperventilating when I walk by?”

I so wished I had time to beat him up, but my zoning out earlier had made it a tossup whether or not we got to our classes on time.

“Any other day…”

“You’d beat me up for that,” Devin finished as I unlocked the doors of our dark blue SUV.

“Correct.” I started the car and pulled out, bantering with Devin on the way.

Through a combination of light traffic and my awesome driving skills, we pulled into the parking lot ahead of the bell. “Talk to you later, bro.” I grabbed my backpack and purse.

“Ditto,” Devin said while shutting the door.

I hurried to class, mentally picking out my outfit for a party one of Devin’s friends was giving tonight. I got to my class just before the teacher and answered a few hellos as I headed for the back. The physics teacher began telling her latest corny joke while I slid into my seat, and I started listening to it patiently.