Katherine ducked as the sword came at her head. The blade moved through the air with a deadly swish, lodging in the wooden pole behind her and getting stuck there. She slid underneath the blade of the sword, pulling the metal baton from her belt, flicking her wrist, extending it, and jumping up.
She was advancing, before the sword could swing at her again, bringing the baton down over the wrists that gripped the hilt of the sword.
The sword fell with a clatter.
She waited for a moment, and then, sighing, snapped the baton down and slid it back into her belt.
Her brother was rubbing his wrists. Katherine knew that he bruised easily. She didn't try concealing her smile.
"Same time next week then?" He bent to pick up the sword, going over to the weapons wall and sliding it into its leather scabbard.
"I'll have to check my schedule,' she wanted to answer easily. She wanted to say yes. She knew that he wanted her to say yes. 'The new term is beginning soon. And Eleanor's got all these events she wants us to go to. But you know that already." He nodded. She unclipped the belt, hanging it on one of the hooks, where many other identical belts hung. The dark, twisting tattoos that spiraled from her wrists to the rest of her body glowed for a brief moment as her arm brushed against her brother's skin. His identical tattoos glowed in response, before settling into their usual darkness.
"Katherine, you do know that you don't have a choice?" Aaron spoke quietly, and she paused for a moment before pulling her jacket on.
"I've been here every week since you called. I've told Marjorie that I'm coming back. But I do have a life now."
"It was always going to be temporary." A flash of irritation burned through her, but she bit her lip. She lifted the small bag that she had brought along, and the items inside rattled as she swung it over her shoulder.
"I'll text you about next week."
She was sweating and the fabric of the jacket tugged uncomfortably at her skin. She wanted, suddenly, to pull it off and set it on fire.
She settled for pulling it off and wrapping it around her waist.
Katherine had gotten used to the invasive, sometimes irrational thoughts that seemed to occupy permanent space in her brain. She had also gotten used to shaking them off, gotten used to fighting the urge to jump off buildings, or walk into traffic. Or set items of clothing on fire.
Her brother was walking her to her car, she realized as he followed her outside. He was overprotective of her, almost to a fault.
She had- somehow- found parking on the street, even though parking in London was a bloody nightmare, on a good day.
The evening commute had thrummed into life, and cars, trucks, and buses sped by.
Up ahead, a man in a yellow vest stood at a parking meter.
"I'll take your stuff to your car." Katherine handed Aaron her bag as she stood, staring at the bustle of the coming evening.
It was cold. Colder than it should have been early in August. The sun was already sinking, and the sky was darkening rapidly, bypassing every shade of purple and red, becoming, instead, every shade of black.
The wind was different too. The warm, balmy summer wind that had dominated the previous months had become sharper, biting, stinging her skin painfully.
She frowned.
When she turned, the traffic cop had walked over to Aaron and was arguing with him. Her brother had the passenger door open, but her bag was still in his hand.
The traffic cop's face was pink where the wind beat against his face, and his reddish beard quavered in the breeze.
She was close enough now to hear their conversation.
"…if you could just produce your license, and proof that this is your vehicle then it wouldn't be a problem, but you can't, can you?"
"I have the keys to the car in my hand!" Aaron's voice was loud and sharp. "Why do I need to produce proof when I have the keys to the car?!"
"This is just routine procedure, and you need to watch your tone with me lad." The traffic cop's voice was dangerously sharp.
Aaron's hands were balling into fists, and his jaw was clenched.
"I've been parking my car here every week for several weeks and no one has ever asked me for my license." Katherine spoke sweetly, coming from behind her brother, angling her body slightly in front of his.
"This is my car, and this is my brother you're harassing." She was shorter than the man who had been glaring at Aaron, and she smiled up at him slightly.
His face reddened.
"It is routine procedure as I informed your brother. We've had a spate of car-jackings lately, all we're doing is our jobs."
Katherine nodded. She had reached for her brother's arm and was squeezing his wrist tightly. She hoped the pain would keep him quiet.
She spoke almost reflectively.
"Maybe I'm just stupid,' she smiled at the traffic cop again. 'But why would someone try and break into a car in the middle of rush hour, with a traffic cop three meters away? And why would you assume he was breaking in? I mean, he did have the car keys in his hand." She widened her eyes even further.
The traffic cop opened his mouth as if to speak and then closed it again. He snapped his notebook shut, removing his hand from the belt around his waist.
"I'm sorry for all the inconvenience sir." He spoke woodenly and then with several short, stilted movements, turned, and walked briskly away.
There was a purple ring around her brother's wrist where she had been clutching at him. His chest was heaving, and his dark eyes were hard, almost flint-like.
"Three people got in their cars and drove away and he didn't ask them for anything." He mumbled the words under his breath.
"I'm sorry, look at me, I'm sorry. Go upstairs, take a shower and just…get some rest." He nodded.
Aaron and Katherine did not look alike. It had not been something that they had particularly noticed, and no one who knew them had ever pointed it out. It did not matter in their very insular world.
That he was her brother was all that mattered. But they did not look alike. Where Aaron's skin and hair was dark and his features long and rugged, Katherine was white, and her hair was almost blonde. While she was almost as tall as her brother, she was lean and spare.
They had never known their mother, who had died a few months after Katherine's birth. They did know, however, that Amanda- their mother- had remarried Katherine's father after Aaron's father had died.
It never made a difference to Katherine, that he was not white, or that she was not black. She did think that it might have bothered her brother when they were younger, that they looked different. She had never asked. Now she thought that maybe she should have.
She knew that Aaron felt the disparities in their genetics more than she ever would.
"I'll text you about next week." She tried to speak lightly but had to swallow several times to get the words out.
She got in the car, taking the keys from him, and he shut the door behind her.
She sat for a moment before turning and reaching for the seatbelt.
"I'll probably be coming with Eleanor to a few of those events, so I'll see you then."
He spoke quietly.
"I know you're uncomfortable with lying to her,' Katherine started the car, and Aaron stood back. 'But we don't have a choice."
He nodded. They were both complicit in the lie that they had been telling Eleanor- Katherine's best friend and Aaron's girlfriend.
When Katherine had first met her, she had told Eleanor that she had no family. When Eleanor had introduced Aaron to Katherine, it had been in their best interests for them to lie and claim that they did not know each other.
It hadn't been that difficult. Aaron and Katherine were both excellent liars. But the situation became more awkward every day, every week, every time Eleanor wanted to hang out with her best friend and boyfriend.
"I'll text you about next week." She said again and he nodded.
She was pulling out of the underground carpark seconds later, merging with the afternoon traffic.
Katherine had been driving from Edinburgh to London every week for months. The journey had seemed horrific at first, but it was either that or leave university, her flat, her life, and move back to London. She didn't think she was ready for that yet.
The training sessions with her brother was the most time she had spent with him in almost three years.
Another wave of guilt pushed at her, and she clenched her jaw, before swerving around a truck and accelerating.
She hated driving behind trucks, and she had a seven-hour drive to Edinburgh. She would probably only get there after midnight.
*
She had been driving too fast, she realized as she parked her car in her parking bay. It was only just after eleven when she locked her car and made her way to the lift.
A crack of thunder skipped overhead as the dirty steel doors of the lift slid open. And then, as if the noise had broken the sky, she heard the gush of rain flooding down, turning the streets into rivers almost immediately.
The slivers of fear that had been creeping into her heart for the past few months twisted in her chest and abdomen.
The rain and thunder had turned into a storm when she stepped onto her floor.
It was only August.
*
"Feels like it's been bloody raining forever." Eleanor handed Katherine her mug and she mechanically filled it with hot water before handing it back.
"It has been raining for a while." She poured the hot water over her own coffee and then, stirring vigorously and adding milk, lifted it to her lips.
It hadn't only been raining, it was storming.
It felt like Edinburgh was drowning.
It was only August.
But it was like that everywhere. Every time she opened her phone there were news reports about the uncanny weather for the time of year. It should have been a bright, warm summer, but blizzards, hurricanes and flash floods had swept across the Northern Hemisphere at an alarming rate. The North Americas had experienced multiple tornadoes, while biting frost covered every surface in Britain and the rest of Europe.
It wasn't any better down south, Katherine thought, as she smeared jam on her toast.
It had been predicted that it would be the wettest winter that the Southern Hemisphere would face, but instead, the countries below the equator were burning. A crippling drought had struck most of Southern Africa. New Zealand was recording more earthquakes than it ever had before, while wildfires raged across Australia.
Reading the news was horrifying.
What made it worse was that Katherine knew the series of events that had thrown the world into turmoil.
She knew that the increasingly terrifying weather was only a retaliation to a fire. An act of war really.
The fire in Djibouti hadn't made international news. It was only a small fire. Katherine only knew about it because Aaron had called her in the middle of the night, reading the news article to her over the phone. He had sent her the link to the article afterwards and there had only been one picture- a volcano on fire, and Katherine knew that everything was about to change.
She sighed. It was all too dramatic to bear sometimes.
The clicking of heels against the wooden floors pulled her out of the reverie, and she turned to see Eleanor standing in the doorway of the kitchen, her hands on her hips. Her best friend wore ridiculously high heels and a shiny floor-length dress.
She hadn't even noticed that Eleanor had left the room.
"What's all this?" She raised her eyebrows, lifting the mug to her lips to hide her smile.
"This is what I'm thinking for the formal on Friday night? What do you think?"
"I think…that you're going to have trouble going anywhere in those shoes. You'll probably get your heel stuck in a grating and drown."
"Sometimes I wish you'd be more supportive.' Eleanor stepped out of the shoes. 'I just want to look nice. I invited Aaron and I want to look, I don't know, more sophisticated I guess."
"You always look nice. I don't think you need to worry about impressing him." She stood facing the kitchen sink for a moment, trying to compose herself, hoping that her face didn't give anything away.
Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she mulled over the fact that her toast had probably gone cold.
Turning, she spoke, "You do realize we're in the middle of the worst weather this country, no, this continent, has seen in years? No one is going to look sophisticated, my love."
Eleanor rolled her eyes, "Oh ye of little faith." She turned, lifting the voluminous skirt of her dress as she walked back to her bedroom. If Katherine knew her friend at all, she was going to find a way to wear that dress and those heels. She probably wouldn't even get a drop of rain on her all evening.
Eleanor was back in the kitchen minutes later, wearing her pajamas, her short hair tied away from her face. She looked so young, Katherine thought, and something twisted in her chest as her friend sat down at the table and started scrolling through her phone, resting her cheek on her hand.
"You want to stay in today?" Eleanor spoke, taking the plate that Katherine handed her.
"I don't think the professors are going to get out of bed today. We'll be lucky if we get any of our coursework." A crack of thunder boomed overhead, and the walls of their flat shook.