The dawn light crept through the tent's fabric, which cast long shadows over scattered equipment and over the four brothers who had been sleeping peacefully.
Peter snapped awake first, his internal clock pulling him from the world of dreams, laced with fragmented memories that were not quite his own. Battlefields he had never seen, a childhood he had never lived, and always the face of a father who remained a sense of duality for him, that was overly familiar yet foreign.
He carefully sat upright, his joints protesting from sleeping on the hard ground, though he or they did not have much of a choice. Around him, his brothers began to wake up one followed by another, which had already become their norm. Which he deduced was part of their genetic programming, or perhaps due to the memories they had inherited from their father.
Paul's finger twitched toward his hips, before consciousness fully took control.
