The sister stopped preparing the tea, and the brother stopped wiring the bomb. They peered through the cracks between the flimsy boards covering the dirty glass panes, searching for the source of the rumble. At first, they couldn’t see anything but abandoned cars and the usual straggler on the cobblestone street, but then a gaggle of people wearing nothing but filthy, threadbare, color-drained rags sprinted past them, holding crude, wooden spears and shields. 

The sister watched, motionless, while the brother left the room to grab an aluminum bat covered in grime. A gunshot rang. An army of men in black and white suits paraded past their window, and the boy’s shoulders stood erect, watching the door. The sister stood still, her eyes fixed on the men’s sunglasses. 

“The Dolos Act,” she muttered. “Slimy, filthy worms. And they say they want to help with population control.” She scoffed in disgust. Her brother shook his head wearily and muttered a curse. 

“Get back to work,” ordered the sister. She continued to gaze outside as the brother headed back to the kitchen. 

The men disappeared from view, a cloud of dust still billowing and the pounding of their leather-soled feet echoing through the narrow streets. The sister went back to preparing the tea. She set the filled teapot on the stove to boil and grabbed a packet of tea leaves from the cupboard. Her brother clutched the bat under his left armpit and returned to wiring the flimsy, sticky bomb on the cutting board. He inserted a green wire into a pin, locked the timer in place, and attached an adhesive to the back. The familiar tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” drifted to his ear as he looked around to see the sister idly singing to herself as she waited for the water to boil.

He smiled slightly. 

Suddenly, the front door window shattered. Twenty bullet holes appeared on the opposite white. They were followed immediately by twenty booms. The bullet fired from a standard m16 rifle travels almost three times faster than the speed of sound, the girl thought immediately, almost instinctively. The brother grabbed the bomb and the bat, and the sister grabbed the steaming hot kettle with callused hands, her face deadpan. Their heads were still, ears perked. The brother crouched by the opening of the door. He set the bomb’s timer to five seconds and tensed his right arm, ready to swing the bat, his left thumb on the bomb’s timer button. They waited for two minutes, the ring of silence filling the air. Nothing. Two minutes later, still nothing. Yet another false alarm. The siblings calmly returned to their original places, and the teapot was put back on the stove, and the unfinished bomb on the kitchen cutting board. The sister began to sing again, and this time, her brother joined her. Their collective voices carried throughout the house, and the whistle of the teapot soon joined the tune. 

A loud thump on the roof cut their singing short. The roof crashed in, fragments of drywall and brick crashed to the floor, and a tiny storm of flowing black and white fell through the hole. A suited man gazed at the two siblings and then said, “Halt! By the Dolos Act, one of you must come with me.” The man grinned, his soft, bright-red lips reaching from ear to ear. He boomed, “Council is hungry for blood. They have once again deemed Dolos apropos, with the reason that you filth have excessively stained the streets. Dolos, the sinuous god of trickery, has called to them and they have sent us… to deliver you. Now isn’t that fun–” 

The sister interrupted him by grabbing the whistling teapot and swinging it against the back of the brother’s head. He fell instantly, his head slamming into the tiled floor with a sickening crunch. The man stopped talking and stared. The sister reached down and grabbed the bomb. Seeing that the timer was still set to five seconds, she stepped back, armed to throw. Boiling water dripped through the top of the tea pot, still in her hand, onto the unconscious boy’s face below her, dying away in spots of sizzling, exposed flesh. The sister’s eyes pierced into the man’s and as she watched, a glimmer of glee flickered in his pupils. The suited man choked out a high-pitched snicker, which quickly flooded out into a hearty guffaw. She stared at him as he doubled over, rocking with laughter. When the chortling subsided, and the man finally straightened, he exclaimed between lips still trembling with laughter, “Is this what you peasants now resort to? Wowzers, I thought family was everything to you guys.” The girl’s face remained frozen as she nudged her brother’s limp body towards the man. He bent over, in another fit of laughter, wheezing and stomping his feet. “You really have descended down to the depths, haven’t you?” And then he raised his arms above his head and lifted his head to the ceiling. He shouted, “Accept this offering, O tortuous Dolos! Trickery you gifted the Council and now the mites offer you their last fleeting sacrifice of family!” 

Licking his bright-red lips, the suited man walked over to the boy, picked him up, and slung his body over his shoulders. “Your actions will get a nice laugh from Council. Thank you for your services.” 

The suited man slowly made his way to the front door, with a lingering snicker. The girl breathed a sigh of relief and went back to the kitchen. Picking up the teapot, she filled it with water and put it back on the still-lit stove. She sat back against the wall and thought about how she was really going to have to prepare now for when Council came to get her. The worry of building more weapons consumed her, especially since it was usually the boy’s job. Oh well. the girl thought and started to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” again. The tune rang throughout the house and through the boards covering the front door window, withering away in the empty, cobblestone streets.