Prologue

She was the best, had been for a long time. Until she met them. That day she had nearly lost it all. Tess should have killed them, then. But something stopped her. It wasn't humanity; no it was that she saw potential in them. If they got better then her, she could stop.. She had been so wrong, so very wrong.

That day had started out badly, she woke up with the feeling that something was wrong. Her golden eyes opened to find a small child standing at the foot of her bed. A bullet caught her shoulder as she moved to grab her gun. A bullet took the child's arm, made it useless for the moment. And then another bullet hit her chest. Another child was standing by her door. That one took a bullet to the gut. Neither child said anything at first. She got out of bed, and tended to her wounds. Keeping her attention on the children though. She then tended to their wounds, and tied them up.

"Who are you?" She demanded as she sat with backward in a chair, staring at the children. They were twins, and for the life of her she couldn't figure out what gender they were. They had to be only five or six, what were they doing with guns? How did they manage to get into her room? The questions drilled in her brain. And out of her lips. But silence was all that she got. Until, she started to take cut off of the finger of one of them. Its twin broke. Screaming at Tess, and sobbing. Giving her everything she wanted to know. They had been a distraction.

She left and killed the person who had used them as bait. She was that good. The redheaded assassin came back to find the children still in her room. Curled up in a corner. She had frowned at them and gone to lean down and stare at them. They looked exactly the same, except one of them had a small thin scare on their lower lip. She noted this, and filed it away into her memory. The one with the scar had been the one that hadn't broken.

"What are you still doing here?" Tess asked, once more she got silence. With a barked out order demanding the answer she took a hold of the one with the scar. The stronger one and bashed their head into a wall, hard. Her cold golden eyes turn toward the twin and asked once more, "What are you still doing here?"

"We.. Don't have anywhere else to go.." The child answered, trying to cling to their silent twin. Tess let got of the child and stared at it quietly. Still she couldn't figure out what it was. So young, and so aware. Where they some experiment gone wrong? Clones perhaps? Her golden eyes turned toward the scarred one. They were identical, even in the fact that she couldn't figure out their genders. She was aware of some experience the government had been doing with clones, trying to create the perfect soldier. God it was such an annoying cliché. But it went on, it happened so often. She had been sent into Russian to shut down a cell of terrorist who were experimenting with clones. Trying to breed a more advanced form of person.

Tess stood up and walked away from the children. She went over to her bags of clothing. And pulled two pairs of shorts. And two of her smallest tank tops. Tess was twenty, and they were five. She'd get them their own clothing later. Later? Was she going to keep them? Surely not. She frowned for a moment as she watched the children. Giving them the clothing she'd walk over to her bed and sat back down. She was going to watch them change, not out of a perverted need. But out of the need to be able to figure out their genders. As she watched she asked a question, but her voice faltered half way through it, "What's your nam… Names?"

She managed to finish the question. But she was shocked to find out that the children.. Didn't have a gender. They were androgynic. Somehow she managed to keep her mouth from hanging open. Her golden eyes turned away then, having not desire to watch them finish. She waited for her answer, and when she got none she demanded it again. Finally she received her answer.

This one from a deeper voice than the one before. The one with the scar murmured, "We don't have names.."

"Then what am I supposed to call you?" Tess demanded in annoyance. Her golden red hair falling over her shoulders and down around her on the bed. Her gold eyes glaring toward the children as she waited.

"..We don't know.." Replied the one without the scar. Its voice was softer, higher. More feminine. Tess filed this information away in her mind as well.

The golden-eyed hit-woman would raise her hand and point a finger at the feminine one and would says, "I call you Thing One.-" She would pause and point toward the one with the scar and then finish, "And you Thing Two."

It was really original, but hey… Tess loved author, and the Cat in the Hat had always been her favorite.