72. The Counterattack Is Underway

The Counterattack Is Underway

“Is that so?”

Despite the absolutely stunning, possibly supernatural beauty of their armed escorts, the young man slowly regained his composure.

His usual cynicism came back with it.

“Then what are the other two reasons?”

“The second reason is cooperation,” the other twin told them as she led them toward the kitchen, turning her almost bare, beautifully curved back toward them.

It felt a little condescending. She had not even disarmed them!

Then again, maybe not. The four of them were in no position to attack a group of unknown enhanced people who outnumbered them ten to one.

“Then what’s the third reason?” Tumbleweed almost demanded, before remembering to soften his tone.

These people were no longer civilians. After surviving alone in this hellscape for two weeks, they had stopped being civilians.

From what he could see, they were resistance fighters, armed and empowered.

“That is classified information. Sorry,” the other woman told him with an easy smile, clearly not sorry in the slightest.

He did not press further, since alienating someone who obviously had influence among these people would be stupid. Instead, he changed the subject.

“How did you survive?”

In his experience, young, combative people who had not yet been crushed by violence were often very easy to lure into bragging about their achievements.

“This fortress is obviously an important position. The enemy must have targeted it immediately.”

He did not add that they would have done so even if only to break morale.

“And yet you must have been here for days.” They had to have been, to build this enormous metal structure even with the help of powers.

“Almost two weeks, actually,” the brown-haired twins said in unison, their voices harmonizing so well they sounded like one person.

Then they sat behind a desk buried in sticky notes and maps, a desk that practically screamed operations command to him.

“This used to be a school. Our school.”

“You’re college students?” Big Guy looked dumbstruck all over again. “But…”

“Magic has opened many paths to ability, and some people would consider those abilities… less than natural,” the young woman on the left said, leaning back in her chair and stretching with both hands over her head.

The other woman only rolled her eyes.

“If you could become more beautiful, wouldn’t you?” she asked, instead of commenting on her twin sister’s shameless display.

“I would rather survive,” he said with a frown.

“Trust me, beauty helps with that too,” the other twin said with a wink.

He was not going to take her word for it…

Because she was right.

Tumbleweed looked around the room and noticed how, no matter what people were doing, their eyes flicked toward the brown-haired twins again and again.

Wonderful. They were the leaders here.

“I would not make that bet if I were you,” one of them said.

They switched speakers whenever they liked, and they looked so much alike that he was beginning to lose track of which one was which.

And then there was that…

“No, I am not reading your mind,” the same young woman interrupted before the thought had fully formed, obviously lying. “It is just superhuman intuition, cold reading, empathy, and social skill.”

Fine. Maybe she was not lying.

The alternative was not much better. It was effectively mind reading, only she could honestly claim that it was not mind reading.

“All right, I’ll concede that much,” he said. “But surviving here takes more than social tricks. The undead don’t care how pretty you are.”

“True. That is where duality comes in,” said the woman on the left.

“Duality?”

If only he knew.

The other brown-haired woman handed the original rocket launcher back to Big Guy, who accepted it silently.

Reality split again, and the rocket launcher became three.

“Everyone, listen up!” the two women called in unison.

Tumbleweed was beginning to suspect that they were not identical twins at all.

“An undead army of three thousand is twenty…