Avon moved close, pressing again him. The strange thing was, it was hard to remember much about his brother. He had been very young when his new 'parents' had taken him away to live a life of privilege. There were snatches of memory, brief episodes he had long since stopped thinking about. But he tried.

"He used to tease me about my interest in the sciences. The other children at school thought I was strange, so my brother simply refused to talk to me in public - he always referred to me as 'the freak' or 'the embarrassment'. I was forever conducting little experiments...I set the sitting room curtains on fire once. And dissected a dead rat on my parents' bed. I didn't kill the rat, you understand, I merely found it in the rubbish disposal area outside our accommodation complex, and was curious about how it worked. My parents were not pleased, as you can imagine. They thought there might be something wrong with me. But my brother wouldn't have that; he insisted I was curious rather than destructive, that I hadn't meant any harm. He said I was a genius, and the family must make allowances because I would make them all a lot of money one day, pull them out of the gutter. Frankly I can't remember now whether I intended any harm or not, but it pleased me to know that my brother would stand up for me, despite all his teasing. He made it clear that day that he was proud of his weird little brother, after all."

He gnawed his lip for a moment, gaze distant. "But of course, that wasn't enough when the time came for me to leave. He never forgave me for abandoning our family."