I N V A D E R S **also being trashed and rewritten soon**

||Chapter 8-Dreams and Drills||

The memory of our last day in the lab had surfaced in my dreams on more than one occasion, this being one of them.  After that day, I never saw my brother again. I still had no idea what happened to him. Against my highest hopes, I assumed he was dead. It had been seven years and he seemed to have vanished into thin air. 

Poof.

After they released me from the Lab and I began my Corps training, I asked countless people if they had seen my brother, but they acted like Caleb Warner had never existed. As if he was just a figment of a distressed boys' imagination, they laughed lightly, gave me a pat on the back and sent me on my way. Even after the Incident, when people feared and respected me, they still pretended that they had never heard of Caleb Warner. It was all very bizarre to me. I still had some of his belongings, so how could he be imagined? The dog tags from his service with the NightCorps were still in a box under my bed, along with the few things that didn't mysteriously vanish. Imaginary friends didn't have dog tags. 

I hadn't touched that box since the day he disappeared... and didn't plan on facing that pain anytime soon.

Fortunately, I had a high tolerance for pain that morning. 

I rolled out of bed and switched off my alarm just minutes before it was scheduled to screech. Kneeling on the cold floor, I dragged the dusty container out from under the bed. The cardboard box was practically falling apart, one side was torn all the way down the bottom corner. Effortlessly, I tore the tape off the top and gently dumped the contents out. 

His dog tags clinked onto the stone floor, then out came his uniform, identification, notebooks, and his prized possession: a black leather bound sketch book. I took his tags and ran my thumb over the engraved letters on the shiny metal. I put the chain with his tags on it around my neck where they joined my own. Next, I slowly picked up the sketchbook. I used to know every detail of every drawing by heart, but now those memories had been locked away along with the memories of the Lab. For a heart pounding second, I couldn't decide whether to open the book or not. The dense leather book felt good in my hands, natural almost. As much as it gave me a sense of calm, it also pierced my heart with an uncomfortable feeling of loss.

It had been seven years, I had to get over it. I took a deep breath and flipped the cover open. The first drawing was a landscape. Caleb had been an incredible artist, he drew every image as clearly and concisely as if it had been a photograph. I flipped through all of the drawings, there were animals, people, and places, mirror images of the real thing. It was uncanny how exact every detail was, especially the last drawing. It was a portrait of a younger me. He looked  so happy, smiling up at me from the creamy page. He looked nothing like how I did now. My eyes were never bright and happy like they used to be and my mouth was never turned up in a real, genuine smile. I stared at the foreign boy, forgetting it was a drawing for an instant. Those were before what I like to call my Red days. The Red days were after Caleb had disappeared, filled with nothing but red anger and pain. It was also when the Incident had happened... when-- I stopped myself mid-thought. I could not torture myself with those things anymore than I could blame myself for Caleb's disappearance. 

My vision focused back on the book, unfinished in its prime, much like my brother, considering the drawings stopped halfway though. Except the last page. On that page there were unfamiliar words written in Caleb's handwriting.  I had no recollection of it being there before. The small message read:

Read between the lines.

A wave of deja vu hit me as I read those words and I couldn't help but wonder what the message meant. I closed the book abruptly and shoved Caleb's things back in the box. I was on the verge of ripping the dog tags off my neck, but I resisted. He would stay with me, one way or another.