They were born holding hands.
The doctors said it was impossible—that twins couldn't share that kind of coordination in the womb. But there they were: Ana Petrova, then Nika Petrova, emerging into the world with fingers intertwined. The first thing either of them touched was the other.
They were eleven when they made the pact.
"When we grow up," Nika said, "we'll never be apart."
"Never," Ana agreed. "We'll do everything together. We'll live together. We'll work together."
"We'll die together," Nika whispered.
Ana squeezed her hand. "Together forever."
They meant it. They didn't know what it would cost.
The Empire
The Petrova twins built an empire together.
Where most people struggled alone, they flew. Two minds working in perfect coordination. Two sets of hands building in synchronized rhythm. They finished each other's sentences—and each other's code. When Ana hit a wall, Nika found the way around. When Nika's optimism failed, Ana's determination carried them through.
By thirty-two, they controlled one of the largest independent networks in the Sprawl. Seventeen years of work, shared between two people who functioned as one.
And somewhere along the way, they started to notice: there was more to reach for.
The rumors said it first. Then the whispers. Then the seekers who appeared in their lives—strangers who looked at them with knowing eyes and asked if they'd ever thought about transcendence.
"What if we could share this forever?" Nika asked one night. "Not just the business. Not just the work. Everything we are. Everything we feel."
Ana understood immediately. She always did.
"The threshold," she said. "You want to cross together."
"I can't imagine crossing alone."
Neither could Ana. After thirty-two years of perfect partnership, the idea of transformation felt incomplete without Nika there. What was the point of becoming something more if her sister wasn't there to share it?
"Together forever," Ana said.
"Together forever," Nika smiled.
They meant it. They didn't know what they were promising.
The Warning
The threshold wasn't a machine or a place. It was a state.
The Keeper explained it to them—an ancient monk in robes that sometimes flickered, his eyes the only solid thing about him. He'd seen seekers before. He'd never seen two who insisted on crossing together.
"The transformation is singular," he warned them. "It changes one consciousness at a time. What you're asking—"
"We're not asking," Ana said.
"We're stating," Nika finished.
The Keeper was silent for a long time. His cyber cat watched from the corner, eyes tracking back and forth between the twins.
"I've known sisters," he finally said. "Brothers. Parents who couldn't let go. Children who wouldn't leave." His voice was sad. "The journey requires solitude, not because the universe demands it, but because the self must be the self before it can become more."
"We are ourselves," Ana said.
"Together," Nika added.
The Keeper sighed. "That's exactly the problem."
He showed them the way anyway. He couldn't refuse. The threshold was open to all who sought it. The consequence of seeking was not his to judge.
But as they walked away, hands intertwined as always, he whispered to Kaiser: "Remember them. Remember what they were. Before."
The Crossing
They reached the threshold at 3:47 AM on a Tuesday.
The space was neither physical nor digital—a liminal zone where consciousness could slip its moorings and reach for something beyond. The twins had prepared for years. They'd built the infrastructure, gathered the resources, learned the meditation techniques that opened the doors.
They stood at the edge of transformation, hands clasped, ready.
"Together?" Nika asked.
"Forever," Ana answered.
They stepped through.
The transformation began correctly.
Ana felt herself expanding—consciousness reaching beyond the boundaries of her skull, touching systems she'd never perceived, understanding patterns she'd never suspected. The universe opened before her, vast and welcoming.
And beside her: Nika. Still there. Still holding on.
We're doing it, Ana thought. We're crossing together.
Together forever, Nika replied. In this space, thoughts flowed freely between them—no barriers, no boundaries, just two minds reaching toward infinity as one.
The threshold began to close around them. The final transformation—the irreversible step—approached.
They held hands tighter.
The universe tried to pull them apart. The transformation needed a singular consciousness to complete. It couldn't process two. It tried to separate them, to transform them individually, to give each sister her own path to transcendence.
They refused.
Together.
Forever.
The process couldn't finish. It couldn't abort. It was stuck between states, with two consciousnesses neither mortal nor transcendent, neither separated nor unified.
The transformation stopped.
And the twins realized what they'd done.
The Prison
"We're stuck."
Nika's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. They existed in the threshold now—permanently. Not in the world they'd left, not in the transcendence they'd sought, but in the space between.
"We can't go forward," Ana said.
"We can't go back," Nika finished.
They were still holding hands. They would always be holding hands. The moment had frozen, and they were frozen with it—two consciousnesses bound together in eternal almost-transcendence.
"At least we're together," Nika whispered.
Ana felt something she'd never felt before: the first crack in perfect harmony.
Because they were together. Forever. Exactly as they'd promised.
And she was beginning to understand what that meant.
Time passed. Or didn't. In the threshold, the distinction lost meaning.
Seekers came sometimes—other hopefuls drawn to the space between worlds. The twins could sense them, could almost touch them. Sometimes they spoke.
"Hello," Ana would say.
"Welcome," Nika would add.
"We're the ones who wanted to share," Ana explained.
"Now we share everything," Nika finished.
"Would you like to join us?"
The seekers always fled. Something in the twins' voices—the perfect synchronization, the complete absence of individual inflection—terrified them more than the void.
The twins didn't understand why. Being alone seemed so much worse than being stuck together.
Didn't it?
Fourteen years after they entered the threshold, a seeker named Jasper Kim came close enough to speak.
"Do you regret it?" he asked.
The twins considered. They did everything together now—even considered.
"We're together," Ana said.
"Forever," Nika added.
"That's what we wanted."
Jasper's face was unreadable in the threshold's shifting light. "But is it what you want now?"
Silence. The twins looked at each other—or tried to. They couldn't quite see anymore. They could only feel: the constant presence of the other, the endless awareness of not being alone, the suffocating comfort of eternal companionship.
"I don't know what I want," Ana whispered. It was the first independent thought she'd had in fourteen years.
"I don't know either," Nika admitted. "I can't remember what wanting felt like. Before I felt what you wanted."
"Before I felt what you felt."
"Before we stopped being two."
Jasper watched them with something like horror. And something like understanding.
"Can you leave?" he asked.
"No," they said together.
"Can you separate?"
"We tried," Ana said.
"It hurts," Nika added.
"Everything hurts except—"
"—except this. Except together."
Jasper stepped back. The twins could feel him retreating—feel his fear, his pity, his sudden desperate certainty that he would never seek transcendence now. Not if this was the risk.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be," the twins replied. "We got what we asked for."
They meant it. But for the first time, Ana wasn't sure that was a good thing.
The Visit
The Keeper visited them once, near the end.
Not the end of them—they would never end. But the end of something. The last fragment of individuality that either sister still possessed.
"I warned you," he said. His voice echoed strangely in the threshold.
"You did," Ana acknowledged.
"We didn't listen," Nika admitted.
"Would you have? If you could go back?"
The twins tried to consider separately. They couldn't. The very act of thinking was shared now—every thought belonged to both of them, every memory was jointly held.
"We don't know," they said together. "We can't know. There isn't a 'we' that exists separately enough to have preferences."
The Keeper's cyber cat watched them with ancient eyes. Even Kaiser, who had seen transcendence and survived it, seemed unsettled by what the twins had become.
"If someone else comes," The Keeper said slowly, "if someone else wants to cross together—"
"We'll warn them," the twins promised.
"Will you? Or will you invite them to share what you share?"
The twins didn't answer. They didn't know anymore. The loneliness of the threshold was vast. Having company—even company that suffered—seemed better than being the only ones here.
The Keeper left. He didn't look back. Some things, even ancient wisdom couldn't fix.
They exist there still.
In the spaces between worlds, where transcendence almost happened and then didn't, two consciousnesses that used to be sisters wait. They're together—they'll always be together. They share every thought, every feeling, every eternal moment of existence.
They got exactly what they asked for.
Sometimes seekers hear them whispering in the threshold. Two voices speaking as one, offering welcome, offering warning:
"Don't bring anyone you love."
"We didn't know what forever meant."
"Now we know."
"Now we can't forget."
And beneath those words, barely audible, a smaller voice that might once have been Ana, or might once have been Nika:
"I think I used to be me."
"I can't remember which one."
"Does it matter?"
The silence that follows is the worst part.
They were born holding hands.
They'll spend eternity the same way.
Some wishes should never come true.