 
DoriaN A

Jon Jacks
Other New Adult and Children's books by Jon Jacks

The Caught

The Rules

Chapter One

The Changes

Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency

The Healing

The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom

Charity

The Most Beautiful Things

The Last Train

The Dream Swallowers

Coming soon:

Wyrd Girl

Text copyright © 2012 Jon Jacks

All rights reserved

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# Chapter 1

Perhaps I should be panicking – my parents had died in a situation similar to this.

Teeth are bared.

Faces scowl.

Mouths twist open in rage.

When it had happened that first time, and I was still a child, I could hear their angry yells, their screams.

Now all that comes out of those mouths is the sound of violins.

Within our armoured, soundproofed limousine, all I can hear is Pachelbel's soothing _Canon_.

So I feel safe, watching the police struggling to control the surging crowds as if it's all just taking part on a TV screen.

They're trying to push the shouting people blocking the road back, clearing the way for us.

Trying to ensure that, this time at least, there's no man forcing his way into the car to try and snatch me.

'Drive Claude.'

Dorian doesn't even bother glancing up from the notes he's reading.

'But sir, I...'

Claude gestured towards the people in his way.

Dorian, of course, hadn't noticed.

'They'll move as we move,' Dorian says calmly. 'Or we'll run them over, won't we?'

'Yes sir,'

Reluctantly, Claude put the car back into gear and started to slowly pull forward once more.

Typical.

An Apedroid chauffeur showing more compassion for the Perma-Leisured than Dorian ever could.

But then, that was typical of Dorian's class.

Typical of _my_ class.

*

'They're well looked after; they're not starving,' my father used to say, backed by nods of agreement from my mother.

'They don't have to work, like us. They just want more than they're fairly entitled to.'

And my parents weren't bad people. They were good people.

May God bless them.

*

Not surprisingly, our car's movement only increases the number of furious glares directed our way.

We've gone from being a passing car innocently caught up in a demonstration to a manifestation of the oppression they're facing.

They surge towards us, ignoring the vicious strikes of truncheons, the freezing shock of tasers.

Even some of the police begin to look sickened by the punishment they're doling out.

The police line buckles.

It wavers.

It breaks.

And the angry crowd crashes against us, banging at the windows with fists, stones and iron bars.

*

'Don't worry; it's fully armoured! They can't break in!'

Dropping his notes, Dorian grabs my hands reassuringly.

But he can see the tension in my face, see it in my eyes.

My parent's car had been heavily armoured too.

Yet, somehow, they had still managed to break in.

'Drive, damn you Claude!' Dorian cries out.

Claude turns in his seat, his huge, brown simian eyes wide with confusion.

'But sir, there's a horse, a police horse...'

Through the windscreen, I can make out the grey flanks of a panicked, rearing horse, keeping everyone at bay with its thrashing hooves.

Suddenly, my door clicks open.

I jump back in terror.

A raggedly clothed hand slips inside, gripping the door edge, trying to pull it open against the pressure of the packed crowd surging against it.

For the first time, I can hear the shouting, the screams, the vainly yelled commands of the police.

'Dorian!' I shriek.

Dorian instinctively reaches for one of the slim, elegant guns nestling in the drink cabinet's velvet.

Pulling me back and away from the gun's blast with his free hand, he aims and fires at the invasive hand.

The gun is almost silent.

But there's a scream of agony.

The hand disappears in an explosion of blood and flesh.

Leaning across me, Dorian pulls the door closed once more.

_'Drive_ Claude! Or I'll have you stripped for spare parts!'

Claude guns the car towards the rearing horse.

Perhaps sensing the danger, the horse turns, clumsily leaping across our car's bonnet.

Its massive body strikes the windows hard, cracking but not completely shattering them.

Scrabbling ungainly across the roof, its hooves claw into the bright blue paintwork.

To one side of our limousine, a policeman raises his rifle, aiming it above our roof as if about to shoot his own, mounted colleague.

The violins take a relatively sharp turn of key.

I feel as much as hear the dull thud of something falling against the car roof.

As the horse leaps off into the crowd, the body of a man slips down across the windscreen.

His surprised face flattens against the glass.

His blood seeps through one of the cracks.

The blood splatters against the seats' white leather.

Like the spontaneous generation of bright red poppies.

*

# Chapter 2

"Have the car cleaned up and repaired Claude; oh, and arrange for someone to remove and dispose of the body too, will you?"

The body still lay spread-eagled across the roof of the car.

It had lain there, strangely immovable, despite the speeds Claude had reached in his efforts to take us to safety.

Dorian hardly gave the body a glance as he strode away from the car towards the doors of his company's headquarters.

For all he knew, for all he cared, it could have been a policeman lying bleeding across the top of our car.

But it wasn't a policeman. He didn't wear any uniform. Unless you counted the bright tee-shirts and dulled jeans of the Perma-Leisured as being a uniform.

Even as we slipped through the wide glass doors, and the guards manning the reception desk respectfully saluted our arrival, a mix of Monkdroids and gloriously coloured Babbots had already moved in to remove the body and make any necessary repairs to the car.

Diligently and expertly organising the efforts of Animadroids and Bots, Claude naturally remained unaware of Dorian's seething ire.

'That idiot!' Dorian hissed, glancing and scowling back at Claude. 'He can't have locked the doors right, no matter what he says! No one can get past DNA locks!'

If anyone should know of any possible fallibilities of DNA locks, it would be Dorian.

Although they weren't amongst his many original inventions, he had made substantial improvements to them. He'd brought them down to a size where they could be used almost anywhere, rather than just as scanners at the gates to the walled apartment and leisure complexes.

His work on them had been his gift to me, he'd claimed; to ensure that what had happened to my parents could never happen to me.

'Sorry Angeic!'

He turned to me, his face suddenly full of concern rather than anger as he reached for and tenderly inspected my arm for bruising or – far worse – any minor cuts we might have missed earlier.

'I...I was just so angry! It all happened so quickly...I felt I'd let you down, that I was somehow responsible for that man forcing his way into the car like that.'

I leant closer against him, hugged him with my free arm, lifted my head to kiss him warmly on his cheek.

'How was it your fault, silly? As you say, the door can't have been locked right.'

I felt him tense.

I realised I was effectively blaming Claude.

'Probably my fault,' I quickly added. 'I didn't make sure it was completely shut when I got in.'

Pulling away from me slightly, Dorian gave me a doubtful grin.

He knew that, after what had happened to my parents, I always double-checked the doors of a car to ensure they were properly locked.

Besides, even if I had missed it, a warning light would have flashed up on Claude's console.

'I'm fine,' I reassured him. 'No harm done.'

'Sure; but no thanks to that idiot Claude,' Dorian half snarled.

By now we had entered the glass lift that would whisk us up to our penthouse. It gave Dorian an even better view of the oblivious Claude.

'I'll have him replaced; I can't forgive him for endangering you like that.'

He tenderly took me in his arms once again. I could feel the trembling of the anger still surging through him.

'Well, _I_ forgive him,' I said firmly. 'I _like_ Claude; he's normally incredibly efficient!'

Dorian wouldn't just replace Claude. He would have him stripped down, his parts used in the manufacture of another Droid

We'd already arrived at our floor, the lift opening directly into our apartment's huge, glass-walled foyer. Naturally, the DNA scanners were set to block access to this floor to anyone we hadn't placed on the database.

Dorian spun on his heels.

He looked back over the city, back towards the area we'd passed through where the riots were still taking place.

Here and there, wispy plumes of smoke rose into the air. The crowds rippled like waves dashing against the rocks of uniformed police officers.

'I suppose, really, it was all down to those idiot policemen letting them through in the first place,' Dorian mused, surveying the scene.

I could see that Dorian was determined to take out his anger – and his frustration that he had failed to protect me – on something or somebody.

'They tried everything they could to stop them rushing around the car,' I said in the police officers' defence.

'Everything?'

Dorian didn't attempt to hide his doubt.

'The only time I saw a policeman using his gun was when they shot that idiot who thought he could ride over our car. They'd even managed to let that buffoon steal one of their own horses from under them!'

'They didn't want to kill anyone unless they had to, Dorian!' I answered sourly. 'It's called compassion, in case you've forgotten what that is!'

Dorian had moved away from the window, slipping off his jacket and handing it to one of the Animadroids who had silently come in the room behind us.

Lifting up his left arm, he began to expertly and swiftly use the small keyboard and screen displayed on his shirt cuff to make the kind of notes that, within a few days, might lead to a whole new range of technologies.

'Compassion in a police officer?' His eyes were fixed on his screen as he spoke. 'Bit of a failing, don't you think Angeic, if it puts people in danger? This incident could be the leverage I need to persuade the councils to accept a more Droid-based force.'

At last he looked up at me, noticing my displeasure.

'You could have died; you know that,' he said calmly by way of explanation.

It wasn't a question. It was a definite statement.

It had only taken a few scratches and the inevitable, untreatable infection that followed to kill my parents. Slowly and horribly.

Dorian gave me one of those warm, caring smiles of his that told me he would always make sure everything was all right.

'Yes, I know,' I said. 'But I _didn't_ die.'

'No thanks to the police.'

He shut down his cuff screen.

He moved closer, placing his arms around me tenderly.

'Think about it Angeic; how much safer would we be if I created a force of a new breed of Tigerdroids?'

*

Tigerdroids! As police!

Was Dorian serious?

I knew he had the capabilities to calm and control their wilder, more predatory natures. The military was full of his remarkable if incredibly terrifying creations, most of which were formed from the larger cats.

It was all down to his genius that they could be organised, controlled, as opposed to the earlier incarnations that often ended up going berserk once their blood was up.

I wasn't the only one, though, who was uneasy about the way he had boosted the aggression of the normally placid Gorilldroids to make them the world's most effective shook troops.

The Gorilldroids I'd passed earlier guarding the mall were, as always, courteous, calm, yet nevertheless imposing and authoritative. If Dorian really believed we required a new police force, where humans took on fewer roles, wouldn't these be more ideal than Tigerdroids?

'You're on TV again Angeic.'

My friend Fullerana nudged me. With a nod, she indicated the large orb of three dimensional images projected from the screen globe, hovering in and dominating the restaurant's farthest and darkest corner.

'They might mention your accident,' Gilleria added, running her hand over the table switch that made the television's sound audible to our table.

I didn't want to hear anything more about our earlier 'accident'.

As we'd made our way to lunch at one of our favourite restaurants, the _Chez Stadia_ , however, my friends had been both horrified and enthralled when I'd told them what had happened.

I could hardly tell them to switch the sound off.

It was the familiar shots of me arm in arm with Dorian, either attending or leaving a variety of glamorous events. Even so, the presenter's tone was more urgent than usual.

'...yet the young, wealthy entrepreneur's forthcoming marriage to sixteen-year-old socialite Angeic Havisham almost ended horrifically this morning when...'

With these words, the scenes switched to the greyer, more foreboding areas surrounding the road where we had been caught up in the riot and attacked.

Now, of course, the road was completely clear of people. A mix of Animadroids and wheeled Bots were silently and diligently combing the area for the traces of DNA that would be used to track down and prosecute anyone involved.

With the change of shots, the voices of the presenters took on an even more serious quality.

Had the attack 'been down to spreading discontent?' they wondered.

Was inadequate policing to blame?

Had the chauffeur been negligent, leaving the car door unlocked?

Both Fullerana and Gilleria shuddered.

'It must have been absolutely _terrifying_ Angeic!'

'I would have been _petrified_!'

Although Fullerana and Gilleria were my best friends, and would soon be my chief bridesmaids at my wedding, I had wondered if I should tell them about the attack.

I knew they would be worried.

I didn't want them fretting that it might happen to them. I also didn't want them pitying me, thinking that it would bring back too many painful memories of my parents.

In the end, of course, I knew I would have to tell them, as even speculation about the wedding dress I would choose was considered newsworthy by most of the television channels.

'Shhuush,' I said, pointing to the screen.

Dorian was being interviewed. He was asked for his opinion on the attack.

'I think questions must be asked about the capabilities of our police force to continue to maintain order.' His eyes looked out confidently at the watching audience. 'We need some way of ensuring the safety not just of ourselves but also the mainly law-abiding majority of the Perma-Leisured, protecting them from what is, after all, an unrepresentative, militant minority.'

I seethed as Dorian continued to turn the incident into an opportunity to promote his idea for an Animadroid police force. But both Fullerana and Gilleria nodded along in stern approval to everything he said.

'Something needs to be done to ensure we're safe when travelling between the Oases.'

'But why do they riot like that?' Gilleria was aghast. 'What must it be like to be paid to do nothing? It sounds like a dream life to me!'

I had to suppress a giggle.

Like mine, Gilleria's job was hardly arduous. And the marketing agency she worked for paid far more each month than the Perma-Leisured's yearly Human-Right Allowance.

'And what do you know about the people out there, little miss goody two-hundred shoes?'

The waitress slammed down the tray full of glasses of champagne that she had brought to our table.

Until now, she had moved amongst and around us silently and almost unseen, replacing empty plates with full ones and refilling our wine glasses.

Now she glared angrily at Gilleria, her bottom lip quivering with fury.

'What? How...how _dare_ you ju–'

'How dare I?' the waitress interrupted Gilleria. 'I dare because I can't believe how _stupid_ you are, how _blind_ you are to what's going on out there! You think people enjoy _lazing_ around all day do you?'

'But what about you?' Fullerana leapt to Gilleria's defence. ' _You've_ got a job, haven't you?'

'Oh sure, if we're lucky we might get one of the few jobs serving you, where you prefer the _human_ _touch_ rather than getting your Droids to do it all for you.' As she said the words 'human touch', she ironically held up one of her latex-gloved hands. 'But my dad, my mum, my brothers; none of them have _ever_ had any _chance_ of working!'

'Well _my_ family probably built the apartments you live in,' Gilleria spat back. 'And there as good as some of us live in in here so–'

Gilleria spluttered to a terrified halt as the waitress calmly removed a latex glove.

We all recoiled in horror as she threw the glove across the table.

'Oh yeah? So you've got your whole family living with you too have you? You've go–'

Her face creased in a fusion of fury and agony as two waiters suddenly caught hold of her and began to forcibly drag her away.

'I'm ever so sorry Miss Havisham!'

Mr Bodor, the faultlessly dressed manager, appeared by our table as if from nowhere. He also nodded obsequiously towards Fullerana and Gilleria.

'Miss Defro, Miss Voller. There's no charge for the meal, obviously.'

As he talked, another pair of waiters carefully removed the glove. One swiftly placed it in in a container he quickly sealed. The other diligently sprayed the areas where the glove had landed and rolled across the table.

With a shocked frown, Mr Bodor silently indicated that the whole table cloth and setting should be immediately replaced.

'And I'll see to it personally,' he said, 'that she is relieved of her role so you won't be bothered by her again.'

'Oh, that won't be necess–'

'Angeic!' Gilleria was shocked. 'Not necessary? The woman insulted us all!'

'That's right Angeic!' Fullerana agreed.

'I'll see to it right away!' Mr Bodor said, purposely heading off towards the kitchen.

*

'Thank you Claude, thank you Maria.'

As soon as Claude had placed the multi-coloured bags of shopping on the floor of the apartment's foyer, the Wallabdroid had rushed over to pick them up.

With a bow of his head, Claude returned to the lift that would take him down to the servant's quarters a couple of floors below.

Maria disappeared into the living room, holding the bags high in the air so she wouldn't drag any of them across the floor.

'The master's already back ma'am,' she trilled happily over her shoulder.

'Back? Already?'

At this time Dorian was usually still in either his laboratory or his office, going over ideas or plans for new production runs. It was a long time since we'd spent a whole evening together, unless it was attending a film premiere or charity dinner.

By the time I'd casually made my way into the living room, Maria had exited through the door leading to Dorian's quarters. She'd left the bags on the low table by the main window, for me to look through later.

By the bags, a warm pot of tea and a small jug of cold milk was also waiting for me.

Maria was efficient as well as cute, there was no doubt about that.

The pile of vibrantly coloured bags with their shop's logos confidently emblazoned across them instilled a strange mingling of pleasure and anger.

Pleasure, of course, because I was looking forward to trying on the light, cool clothes I'd bought to take on our honeymoon.

Anger because, despite Dorian's successful complaint to the Press Council that I was being trailed everywhere by a cortege of paparazzi, I was now familiar with their trick of photographing Claude either carrying the bags or loading them into the back of the car.

There would be the inevitable follow up of interviews with shop assistants who had served me as they tried to piece together a story or scenario from the clothes, jewels or food I'd purchased.

The bikinis, in particular, would once again open up speculation about our honeymoon destination. It would be an excuse for a medley of shots of beautiful islands enveloped by bright blue skies and seas.

Everything about my life on TV was made to seem idyllic, effortless, enviable.

After all, we were the perfect couple, weren't we, Dorian and I?

How many times had the viewers been informed that our DNA profiling was so perfectly matched that the wedding organisers had transformed our coding into a symbol of linked spirals, stamped on everything from the invitations to the specially printed wallpaper that would grace the reception rooms?

'Shopping again? What a surprise!'

Dorian chuckled at his own irony as he entered the room.

Casually dressed in a billowing white shirt and linen trousers, he looked at ease, relaxed, as if he'd been home for ages.

'If I'd have known you were home, I'd've called.' We drew closer. 'We could have gone somewhere to eat.'

I tugged playfully on his opened, flaring shirt. He ran his hands up my bared arms.

'I've been busy until a few minutes ago,' he breathed.

'As always!' I teased.

'As always!' he agreed with a gentle laugh.

He kissed me warmly, tenderly.

It took me by surprise.

'It's nice to have you home early.' I sighed happily as he kissed my neck. 'I'm so lonely here without you.'

Of course, the penthouse had been built so that the living quarters divided Dorian's section of the apartment from mine, as was expected of an engaged couple living together.

But unlike many couples, who enjoyed continuing to live almost separate lives, we preferred to share our time together when we were awake, whether it was eating in the kitchen area or watching TV and films in the lounge.

'Lonely?' Dorian drew away slightly in surprise. 'You've always got Maria to keep you company! She's such a sweet little thing!'

'Yes, yes, very very sweet! But it would be nice to be able to talk to someone _human_ for a change when I came home!'

'Human?' Dorian's eyebrows rose in mock horror. 'And what would it look like to everyone I'm trying to sell my Droids to if _we_ didn't trust them with simple tasks like waiting on us and cooking for us? They're intelligent, attentive, energetic – all qualities you'd be pretty hard put to find in any _human_!'

'Dorian, you _know_ what I mean!'

I gave him a light-hearted push.

_'Human_ servants can talk about things that Droids just don't understand, right? Your focus groups must have told you that! That's why you're having trouble persuading people to buy them as maids and what have you!'

I didn't add that some people felt that employing young girls and men from amongst the Perma-Leisured was the right thing to do. Jobs were scarce, and every day more and more roles were being filled by Droids and Bots manufactured by companies like Dorian's.

'Is that what you want to do when I'm not here? Talk to the servants?'

I pulled back, confused.

The voice, although Dorian's didn't seem to have come from him.

I heard him laugh. But the laugh didn't come from his mouth.

Far from smiling, he looked uncharacteristically apologetic.

'Dorian? What's going on?'

The laugh was louder now, and more obviously coming from off to one side of the room.

I whirled around.

Another Dorian was standing by the door leading off to his section of the apartment.

'He fooled you didn't he?' he sniggered, walking into the room with a nod towards the Dorian standing next to me.

'I'm sorry, ever so sorry,' the closer Dorian said.

He looked pained, like he really meant it.

I instantly knew who the real Dorian was and who was the fake.

'Did you think this was funny?' I snapped at the fake Dorian standing by me.

I reached out towards his face, meaning to pull off what I presumed must be some form of ingenious latex mask.

But my nails only scratched at skin, drawing thin white lines across the flesh.

'What?

I was more confused than ever.

How could he look – yes, even _feel_ and _smell_ – like the real Dorian?

'Dorian ordered me to–'

'Ordered?'

'You still don't get it do you, my sweet, sweet Angeic?'

Dorian slipped an arm around me as he drew closer.

'All I get, Dorian, is that you've played an awful trick on me!'

I angrily spun away from him.

'Trick?' he snorted. 'Is that really all you think it is Angeic?'

He sounded astonished, even offended.

He pulled his strange twin towards him, like he was putting him on display for me.

The twin lowered his eyes, too ashamed to look at me.

'It's a _masterstroke_ Angeic, not a trick!' Dorian declared arrogantly. 'This is a totally new level of android, a–'

'Android?'

I was totally aghast. Completely bewildered.

My head swam with the implications of Dorian's words.

Pity. Horror.

I was unsure how to look at and feel about Dorian's – _creation_!

'It's _illegal_ Dorian! You stretch every rule to its limits with your Animadroids, may God help those poor creatures! But to use a human is–'

'But the _resemblance_ , Angeic!'

Dorian firmly grabbed me by the waist, like some Victorian gentleman trying to prevent a woman having hysterics.

'You're forgetting the _resemblance_ between us!'

I stared curiously at them both, trying to work out what Dorian could mean by the importance of their resemblance.

'You...your DNA?' I said unsurely. 'You somehow used your _own_ DNA to...'

I drifted off, unable to fill in the colossal gaps in my knowledge of Droid generation.

'Raised him up from nothing more than a petri dish!'

Standing back, Dorian slowly brought up his hands as if he were miraculously conjuring up life from clay.

With a satisfied grinned, he slapped his creation on the shoulder and pushed him closer towards me.

'Say hello, Angeic, to Dorian A!'

'You mean _Frankenstein_ , Dorian!' I snarled furiously as I stormed off towards my rooms.

*

# Chapter 3

'Frankenstein was the _doctor_ ,' Dorian had roared uproariously as I'd stalked off.

I'd stopped at the doorway to my quarters to quickly change the Permission Profile on the DNA locks, blocking entrance to everyone but Maria.

I'd spun around, snapping at him, 'Same thing!'

At that moment, Dorian and his twin couldn't have looked more different.

Whereas the real Dorian smirked with obvious pleasure, his android seemed strangely, shyly abashed.

It wasn't a look I was used to seeing on Dorian's face.

I'd almost felt sorry for him.

And yes, thinking about it now, wallowing in the slinky comfort of my favourite leather sofa, I realised I _did_ pity him.

He was an android. He hadn't asked to be created, to be brought into being.

Dorian alone was completely responsible for that choice. Just as Dr Frankenstein had created his monster, Dorian had created his own, semi-robotic twin.

It _was_ monstrous!

Not because Dorian A was a monster; no, no, not because of that all.

The real monstrosity, of course, lay in creating a slave, a robotic hybrid, from something that should have been fully human.

'The master says you'll be eating alone today ma'am.'

Maria walked in, deftly controlling the robotic trolley containing the dishes sent out from the kitchen.

'Yes, that's right thank you, Maria,' I answered as she and the trolley began to quickly prepare the room's table for dinner.

Maria moved lithely, effortlessly.

Underneath her smart uniform, I knew, her body was more humanoid than wallaby. It was a mix of bio-robotics, enzyme plastics and, if the rumours were correct (Dorian laughed as if it were a ridiculous question whenever I asked), parts culled from the Apedroid family.

Did something similar lie under Dorian A's loosely-fitting clothes?

When he had stood close to me, held me, I hadn't felt or sensed anything out of the ordinary.

From what little I had seen of him, he seemed to move with the same urgent grace Dorian possessed.

'Maria; this Dorian A – what do you know of him?'

'Nothing much ma'am.'

Maria wasn't to be deflected from her task. She was putting the finishing touches to the table setting while the trolley ladled out the soup.

'First time I saw him was just a few moment ago.'

She pulled back the chair, inviting me to take my seat.

'Yet you knew he was called Dorian A?'

'Of course ma'am; he wore a small badge.'

Ah, did he now; Dorian must have removed that so he could play his awful trick on me.

'Can you tell the difference between them? Between the master and this Dorian A, I mean?'

'Of course miss. The master doesn't wear a badge, does he?'

I laughed. 'No, no, the master _doesn't_ wear a badge Maria!'

Dorian A.

Was there a plan for a Dorian B? A Dorian C?

Swamping the world with a never ending supply of Dorian replicas.

No; Dorian could never do that.

He would never allow any Droid that looked like him to be subservient to someone else.

If he had an alphabet of Dorians in mind, it would be as some of sort of master race at the very least!

I chuckled to myself.

No, not even Dorian would stretch to that.

*

The room's wall-screen blinked.

Dorian wanted to talk.

He knew I was angry. He knew better than to try and cajole me out of my rooms by pleading for forgiveness at the door.

But he also knew that after I had fumed and simmered for a while, I would eventually forgive him.

How could such a perfectly matched couple ever stay angry with each other?

We'd been matched to improve our chances of survival. It was our duty to make it work.

Besides, everyone knew Dorian was a Jekyll and Hyde character; it was that mix of qualities that both drove him and made him a success.

His natural, easy-going charm got him the funding for his research, for his sales.

And his aggression, his frustration, whenever an experiment or a project failed? All that (well, _most_ of it anyway) was usually simply poured back into his work, spurring him on to further achievements.

'Immunity, Angeic,' he would say whenever I protested that he was spending too long in his laboratories. 'That's what _all_ my work ultimately comes down to; giving us some way of fighting back against bacteria, preferably by developing some form of biological immunity.'

Yes, I was happy with the choice of husband I'd been given.

With a casually raised finger, I accepted his call.

Dorian's smiling face suddenly filled the wall.

'I told chef to prepare your favourite.'

He looked down at the dishes laid out around me on the table.

'I told him it had to be something to put you in a good mood as I needed forgiving; again!'

'That's ever so kind of you Dorian.' I tried to ensure he wouldn't miss the sarcasm. 'Or is it Dorian A I should be thanking?'

He chuckled.

'I thought I was Dr Frankenstein. So there seems to be _some_ improvement in the way you think of me.'

'Well don't worry: I'm sure that Dr Frankenstein it will be on all the news channels when they hear of your latest creation. Just think of all those reporters you've so carefully courted, turning on you in a feeding frenzy when they pick up on this juicy little tale.'

'And who says they're going to hear of it? I'm not ready to tell them just yet; are you?'

'What, tell them my darling fiancé has started creating human hybrids? Tell them I'm affectively engaged to a monster?'

'Oh, so I'm back to being the monster, am I?' he laughed.

'Don't you realise the seriousness of all this Dorian?' I snapped, angered by the way he didn't seem to appreciate any of the problems he'd created for us. 'You've gone too far Dorian! If even the slightest drip of information gets out, the whole company will be shut down, all our assets frozen. And what about Dorian A himself? – haven't you even considered the morality of entrapping a thinking, living human as part Droid?'

Even as I said it, I was hoping Dorian would simply confirm what I had already guessed must be the case; that, just as an Animadroids thought processes could be manipulated in the early embryonic stages, Dorian A's mind had been somehow stripped of the self-awareness and emotions that would otherwise turn his own body into the most horrendous imprisonment imaginable.

'Angeic, what's the prime selling point of my products? That I can generate the emotional control within my Animadroids that makes them ideal for any task you want to give them. And with Dorian A, I wasn't working with embryos, but from the original, basic DNA strands; the very building blocks of life!'

'That's it – that's it, isn't it?'

I stared back at him in almost open-mouthed admiration as it dawned on me how Dorian could shrug off any legal challenge to his new creation.

'And I just thought you were being melodramatic when you said you'd raised him up from nothing more than a laboratory dish!'

'Me, melodramatic Angeic? Shame; how little you know me!'

'Oh, I know you all right Dorian. But, yeah, I admit it; I really, really believed you'd gone too far this time! That the law would come down so hard on you as soon as it had even an inkling of what was going on here. But that's the beauty of it all, isn't it? The laws deal with _embryos_ ; there aren't _any_ laws dealing with using DNA to create Droids, because no one ever thought it was possible.'

'See, I knew you were ridiculously intelligent! We are a perfect match, aren't we?'

Absolutely _nothing_ of Dorian A would have existed if he hadn't been raised up from little more than a few chemical strands lying in a laboratory dish.

'The law has to catch up with Dorian's genius before it can begin to hold him back! Oh, how you must have loved it when you figured that one out!'

I couldn't resist an appreciative chuckle.

'You flatter me, Angeic; as always!'

'And I take it there are no plans for a whole army of Dorians?'

'Of course not! One's enough for the world, don't you think? _I_ couldn't live with another me. He's only _partly_ me –not _completely_ me.'

We laughed together.

'So, do I take it I'm forgiven?'

'Forgiven? Partly – not completely.'

'Okay, I'll take that as progress; see you for breakfast?'

'Maybe.'

With a flick of my finger, I cancelled the connection, switching the screen to one of the entertainment channels.

And Dorian instantly filled the screen again.

This time, though, I was with him.

We were attending a charity ball at the Pleasure Orchard, a scene from a few weeks back.

The sound was switched off, but I hardly needed it to work out what kind of commentary would be attached to scenes like this.

The gilded lifestyle. The enviable world of the privileged. The nightlife. The glamorous travel.

It seemed I'd guessed correctly. The screen suddenly lit up with ridiculously bright pans of exotic beaches curling around shimmering blue seas. Our rumoured honeymoon destinations.

And, out in their cramped apartments, the Perma-Leisured are seeing similar scenes to this night after night on their own screens.

Shot after shot of a world they can never be a part of, unless they're lucky enough to get a job as a shop assistant or waiter, or some other servile role.

Is it any wonder more and more of them were taking to rioting?

As if they had deliberately set out to highlight the difference between the two worlds, the scenes shifted to our arrival at the exclusive Corredo Nightclub. The invariably latex-gloved doormen rushed forward to swing open the passenger doors of our mauve Rolls Royce.

The last time someone had opened the door like that was when we'd been attacked earlier today.

And they'd done it without me having to click the DNA locks open first.

Could someone have copied my DNA?

Could someone have taken a cup, a glass, or even just a loose hair from somewhere like the _Chez Stadia_?

Could that someone be a very angry waitress?

Perhaps that waitress was far more furious with me than I'd realised.

*

# Chapter 4

When I woke up, I was surprised how well I'd slept.

Before I'd drifted off to sleep, I'd dismissed the stealing of my DNA as the nonsense it undoubtedly was.

The locks, even on a car, worked by recognising a _number_ of strands of DNA, not just the small sample that could be taken from a hair or a smear on a glass.

Besides, we were constantly being reassured that every restaurant, shop and leisure centre employing the Perma-Leisured had checks in place to ensure our DNA couldn't be recovered by any means.

In _Chez Stadia_ , only Animadroids were allowed to finally clear the tables, while every movement of the Perma-Leisured staff were closely followed by cameras.

So, however our car had been broken into, it had nothing to do with a waitress somehow spiriting away my DNA.

Maria had set the breakfast out across the long table by the window.

Dorian was already up, sitting on the sofa and finishing off the last of his coffee as he read Hugo's _The Hunchback of Notre Dame_.

No, not Dorian – Dorian A.

Dorian had once told me he had already read that book.

He wouldn't bother reading it again.

There were three placings for breakfast at the table.

At two of them, there were empty, used plates.

Droids could be programmed to eat food, but it was rare. It was far easier to keep them nourished with intravenous drips that they inserted every day for little more than a few minutes.

Dorian A started as he heard me enter the room.

He leapt to his feet, strangely abashed.

Then again, he was hardly used to being in the presence of a woman, was he?

'Oh, er, sorry, I'm, er...'

'You're Dorian A. I know. We met, remember?'

He was wearing the badge Maria had mentioned.

The badge spelt his name _DoriaN A_ , the D, N and A all capitalised and more pronounced than the other letters.

DNA – of course.

'No, no; sorry, that isn't what I meant,' he said. 'I meant, I'm sorry I'm here.'

'Why should you be sorry? Dorian created you; he's the one at fault.'

'Er, no, no! I don't mean I'm sorry I'm _here_ , sorry that I _exist_ – I mean I'm sorry that I'm here in this _room_.'

'Why _are_ you in this room?'

'Dorian said to make myself at home while you were staying on your side of the apartment. He wants me to try and get a feel for what it's like being the real Dorian. Please, take a seat.'

I laughed as he hurried towards the table and pulled out a chair for me.

'Well if want to be more like the real Dorian, you can forget being so polite so early in the morning! And you should have asked Maria to remove the used plates.'

'Oh, er, sorry.'

'And don't ever say sorry. Dorian very rarely says sorry, and then only to me when he wants me to forgive him.'

'Ah, yes, the perfect match.'

'The perfect match, yes – what has he told you about it?'

'That both your DNA and computer profiling agree on your compatibility; you should have the most perfect of children.'

'And be blissfully happy too – we mustn't forget that part, must we?'

'I was under the impression that the perfection of the children was the prime consideration.'

'Well, your bluntness is pretty close to the real Dorian already, I'll give you that!'

'But that is the prime role for the profiling and the comparative evaluations, yes?'

'If you mean love is a hopeful by-product, then yes – I presume Dorian has also already told you of our diminishing immunity to bacterial infections? Infections that we would have easily coped with only a few generations back?'

'Naturally. Engendered by an over-reliance on antibiotics for your protection that now prove to be useless.'

While we talked, I had sat down at the table and begun to eat. I felt curiously relaxed in Dorian A's presence.

In fact, yes –it was nice to have someone to talk to other than Maria or George the chef, both of whom were capable of only the most limited conversation.

'So, where is Dorian? I had sort of hoped he might have shown up by now.'

'He was here earlier.'

He indicated the plate containing little more than the bones of the kippers Dorian had chosen for his breakfast.

'He said I should offer you his apologies; as soon as he'd showered and shaved, he was heading straight down to his office.'

'Ah, there's the _real_ Dorian, you see? Can't let any possible friction between us get in the way of his work!'

I looked up from the plate of salmon and scrambled eggs I'd been delicately nibbling at.

'Is this the role he intends for you, do you think? As his apologist?'

He laughed.

I'd never seen a Droid laugh before.

'No, I'm almost _sure_ that isn't my intended role.'

His eyes sparkled with genuine amusement; Dorian's eyes.

It was so odd, seeing those eyes looking at me, but knowing they're not really _Dorian's_ eyes.

'So,' I said, a little unnerved by being observed by familiar eyes in an unfamiliar body, 'what _is_ your intended role, do you think?'

Unfamiliar body? Was that the right expression? But what sort of body did lie beneath those loose fitting clothes?

'From what I've learned from Dorian,' he said in answer to my question, 'I believe it revolves around the lack of immunity we mentioned.'

'Hah! Two brains working on it are better than one you mean? Or are you fated to be nothing more than some kind of human guinea pig?'

Human? Was that the right word?

He chuckled again.

'From what little I've managed to find out about Dorian, I still think I'd be right in assuming he wouldn't exactly be eager to create someone who could rival his intelligence, right?'

'Right.' I laughed with him. 'Though that's a pretty wise assumption to make, I might add.'

Was his reply reassuring or worrying?

Morally, it would have been cruel beyond belief for Dorian to grant his twin with even average intelligence. Yet Dorian A's answer revealed a perceptiveness and sense of humour I wasn't expecting.

Yes, undoubtedly, there was a difference between Dorian and his creation. While Dorian had characteristically laughed at my discomfort at being fooled yesterday, his twin had been embarrassed, sympathising with my humiliation.

Empathy.

Wasn't that the very worst emotion you could grant a human trapped in the body of a Droid?

'Praise indeed.' His eyes shone with a kindness I had never seen in Dorian's eyes.

I intensively reached out, giving his arm the lightest of concerned touches.

'He can't use you as a guinea pig; that wouldn't be right!'

He rewarded my concern with a gentle, dismissive chuckle.

'It depends on what you mean by guinea pig, I suppose.'

Beneath his shirt, I could feel the hardness, the suppleness, the contours and slivering movement, of human muscle.

I was sure of it.

Or was I imagining it?

And if I _wasn't_ imagining it, just how far did his human appearance extend?

'I think Dorian's intention is to somehow use me to develop more biologically based treatments to replace the now redundant antibiotics,' he continued.

'If I've got the history correct, it took generations of work to successfully develop a number of highly-efficient antibiotics, only for a combination of misuse and abuse – such as stopping treatments too soon, allowing resistant strains of bacteria to evolve – to render them useless within a matter of years.'

I nodded.

I struggled to hold back the tears.

When we had first been placed together as a couple, Dorian had promised me that his wedding present to me would be some means of preventing what had happened to my parents ever happening to anyone else.

If he hadn't arrived at an alternative to our now useless antibiotics, he had assured me, he would at least have developed some process setting him on track to make the right discoveries.

Was Dorian A that promised 'process'?

It seemed so.

He hesitated, like he wasn't sure how to act.

His arm waivered, as if he felt he should reach out to console me, but was held back by a natural fear that I would be disgusted by the touch of a Droid.

'I'm...I'm sorry,' he blurted out. 'I shouldn't have spoken so matter-of-factly when your parents–'

'My parents?' I snapped. 'What do _you_ know about my parents?'

He was taken aback by my anger.

So was I.

I couldn't understand why it upset me so much that Dorian A knew of my parents, or that Dorian must have told him what had happened.

'Dorian didn't have the right to tell you!'

*

It was hardly a secret, of course.

I was so famous that everyone knew what had happened.

I had been there when it had happened.

A child who couldn't even begin to understand what was going on when, just as yesterday, our car was surrounded by a rioting mob.

A man had broken in, his face warped with fury and determination.

He had grabbed me, trying to pull me from the car. But my mum and dad had fought back.

Even when the police had finally dragged him out of the car, and he had run off into the crowd, I had still been terrified.

'Don't worry, don't worry Angeic! The nasty, nasty man has gone.'

My mum and dad had tried to reassure me that everything was all night now

But everything wasn't all right, was it?

Mum and dad had only received the most minor scratches trying to protect me.

But it was enough to kill them both once the wounds became infected.

A man had been found, killed as he tried to escape the police.

Good; he deserved it.

*

'Sorry,' I said.

'Just about everyone has lost someone through an infected scratch or wound. I guess I'm just feeling a bit more raw than most people at the moment because of yesterday; it was too close to what had happened to my mum and dad for me not to keep on bringing it back and going over it in my mind once again.'

'I understand,' he said, nodding.

But did he?

How could he?

How could a Droid, who didn't have the full range of human emotions, who didn't have a family – let alone a family now lost to him – possibly understand?

For the first time, I noticed the scratch on his cheek.

It was the one that I'd made last night, when I'd attempted to pull off what I'd assumed must be a latex mask.

'You're...you're bleeding.'

As I would with Dorian, when he'd cut himself shaving (he was always cutting himself shaving; his shavers were stored in their own Heat-Treat), I tenderly touched the cut.

The blood seemed fresh, as if I'd scratched him only a moment ago.

Without thinking, I licked the blood from my fingers.

When I realised what I had done, I gagged.

I looked around for something to spit into, something to swill my mouth with.

I spat into a coffee cup.

I swilled my mouth out with orange juice and spat it out again.

Dorian A look horrified.

'Sorry,' I said, wiping away the last of the dribble with an undignified swipe of a napkin. 'You can just never be sure what's in a Droid's blood.'

'Well, if my whole purpose is to help Dorian develop immunity against infection, I can only presume my blood must be very much like yours – and, probably, is _exactly_ like Dorian's!'

'Ah, yes, yes; of course.'

I felt like an idiot.

He'd made an informed assumption that I should have made myself if I hadn't been so prejudiced against him being a Droid.

Having run his own fingers across the cut, he was now observing the blood on the tips with obvious fascination.

'I must have scratched you pretty badly for it still to be bleeding! I'm sorry, ever so sorry Dorian – Dorian _A_!'

I had to instantly correct myself. Yet it felt so strange placing an 'A' at the end of his name.

It could be Dorian I was speaking to.

A calmer, _kinder_ Dorian.

'Oh, don't worry; you didn't scratch me,' he insisted with a smile. 'Dorian checked. If you had, he would probably have put me under observation as part of his experiment.'

I chuckled.

'Then, just like Dorian, you must be extremely careless at shaving!'

I wiped the cut with the napkin. Now that I took a closer look it, I could see that it definitely had the sharp lines of a razor cut.

'Shaving? Thankfully, I don't need to shave. Dorian hates shaving, so he made sure I wouldn't have to suffer it. I can't grow a beard, see?'

He ran a hand over his smooth, well-defined jawline.

'Well, _that's_ thoughtful of him. But, making you _superior_ to him; that's _not_ like Dorian at all!'

I dabbed at the cut, glad to see that the flow of blood was easing.

'But cuts don't just appear out of nowhere; can't you remember how you might have got it? You must have knocked it or something.'

He shook his head.

'It wasn't there, I'm sure, before breakfast.'

'Well, that's ridiculous,' I snorted, finally bringing the napkin away as the cut from the flow dried up. 'You haven't hurt yourself while you've been with me! You _must_ have knocked yourself earlier and just forgotten it.'

He smiled.

I smiled back, hiding my unease.

As I'd said, cuts don't just appear out of nowhere like that.

Unless, of course, there's some terrible defect in a Droid's makeup.

*

# Chapter 5

As I'd expected, I found Dorian on one of the laboratory floors.

'Dorian, I think you need to take an urgent look at your twin; a cut on his face opened up out of nowhere, while I was with him this morning.'

'A cut?'

For a brief moment he seemed horrified, only for his eyes to almost immediately narrow in curiosity.

'How bad? And when exactly.'

'Not too bad; like a shaving cut. And it was just about half an hour ago.'

Dorian touched his cheek in the exact spot where Dorian A's cut had appeared.

'Where exactly on his face?'

'Strangely enough, exactly where you just touched your own cheek – is there something I should know Dorian.'

He chuckled.

'No, no; course not, Angeic.' He took my hands in his. 'When you said like a shaving cut, well, I know where I've had plenty of cuts, right?'

'But he doesn't shave; he said you made sure he wouldn't have to.'

He shrugged.

'I'll take a look at him to make sure he's okay – but, honestly Angeic, I can't believe this change in you!'

It was a light-hearted comment, yet I sensed a barb hidden in there.

'Change?'

'Yeah, change; yesterday, when I introduced you, you were appalled – now it seems to me like you're caring perhaps a little too much for him, considering he's a Droid.'

'I was appalled because it was a dirty trick to play on me Dorian! And I'm still far from convinced it's right to make a Droid from a human; even if he was raised from nothing more than a DNA strand. And yes, that's even though he's explained how you're intending to use him to work out some way of protecting us from infections.'

'Hah, you _have_ been talking, haven't you?' He grinned hugely. 'Looking at it another way, Angeic, isn't that what you said you were missing around the apartment when I was out? Someone to talk to?'

'You know I didn't mean it this way!'

'Hah, but what other way is there, Angeic? Do you really want someone from outside walking around our apartment on a daily basis? You more than anyone should know that even with the gloves, the vetting and the heat treatments, they can still bring in any of the infections riddling the unprotected zones. Besides, as I've said so many times now, how would it look? – the world's most successful creator of Droids refusing to use his own products in his own home?'

'I think we've drifted a little off track here, Dorian. Remember – I came looking for you because I was worried one of your "successful creations" might not be so perfect after all?'

'Ah, yes, yes; this supposed defect.'

'"Supposed" defect?'

He took me gently by the shoulders.

'Look, honestly Angeic – there's absolutely nothing to worry about, trust me on this one, right? If it makes you feel better, I'll run a few extra tests and checks, okay?'

He looked deep into to my eyes to show he meant it.

I nodded, but said, 'I don't get how you can be so sure that everything's bound to be okay. You've had defects before in your prototypes – I've seen them begin to fall apart until you figured out what was wrong and fixed the problem.'

I shuddered at the memory of some of the Animadroids and even Bots that I'd seen gradually decaying over a few days. Even, in some cases, a few hours.

He shrugged, like he was saying, 'Hey, it's just one of those things you have to accept when you're trying to advance science.'

Then it dawned on me.

He was using Dorian A to research immunity; had he deliberately built faults such as a weakness to cuts and injury into Dorian A's makeup?

'It's not a defect at all, is it?' I said accusingly. 'You've made him susceptible to cuts to help your research.'

He pulled back with a chuckle and surprise in his eyes.

'Angeic! You really think I'd do that to a creation who's my _twin_? Think about it – the cut's probably just something left over from when you scratched him trying to take off his mask!'

He laughed.

'Let's admit it – he really fooled you into thinking he was me, didn't he?'

'Don't start _that_ again!'

I gave him a half-hearted push to his chest, no longer sure whether I should be angry with him or amused by his trick.

'You're still avoiding my question – is he in danger of falling apart in front of me, like that poor Flamingodroid you thought you'd succeeded in creating?'

He shook his head.

'Dorian A's been formed from a completely different process – one in which I've used morphic fields.'

'Morphic fields? That sounds suspiciously like a whole new technology Dorian: which means there's even more things that could go wrong, right?'

He shook his head again.

'Ah ah – not in this case. See, what people don't seem to realise when they talk about DNA being a blueprint that just keeps replicating itself is that it doesn't really explain why one of those replicating strands decides it's going to be, say, a piece of a finger, rather than another strand that decides it's going be a brain cell – and thankfully in just the right place too. Well, it's the morphic fields that help each strand decide what part of the whole it's destined to be; and in Dorian A's case, I linked us together and drew on my own field to ensure he was being accurately formed.'

'I'm sure that would all make perfect sense to someone, Dorian, but–'

The door behind me suddenly swung open.

'Everything's ready for you to view – oh, sorry to interrupt sir.'

A yellow-cloaked technician stood in the doorway, his hand on a portable room-environment control, a finger still hovering over the button it had pressed.

With a muted whirr, the angled glass wall to my left began to swiftly lose its opaqueness.

'Not yet, not just yet!' Dorian snapped urgently, striding toward the technician and reaching for the controls.

But it was too late; the glass wall had completely cleared, giving me a clear view of the larger room stretching out below us.

Across the wide floor, a whole regiment of Tigerdroids had formed up into a precisely defined rectangle. Yet they weren't wearing the uniforms of the army; they all wore the dark blue of the police.

Tigerdroids! As police!

So Dorian had been serious after all.

*

'Using Tigerdroids as police?'

I spun around, facing Dorian with a fierce stare.

'So just when did you really come up with this stupid idea, Dorian? Not yesterday, just after we were attacked, like you tried to make out, obviously!'

I pointed back at the neat lines of uniformed Tigerdroids. They weren't just military Tigerdroids dressed in a different uniform; these were slightly smaller, leaner. There was also a glint of a fierce, sharp intelligence in their eyes.

'You don't create – yes, not even with your genius Dorian – you don't just create something like that in a matter of hours! They must have been in development for a long, long time; long before that attack gave you just the opportunity you needed to promote your...'

I drifted off, my mind whirling as it struggled to form a clearer idea of what was really going on here.

'You know I'm always thinking ahead, Angeic!'

He moved towards me, his arms wide as if he were either protesting his innocence or about to embrace me.

'A good job, too, don't you think? Now that the Perma-Leisured think it's okay to go around attacking our cars.'

Behind him, I noticed that the technician seemed nervous, even a little shame-faced.

'Yes, yes, that's right – and just how convenient was that attack in helping you fulfil your plans, eh Dorian?'

Dorian remained characteristically straight faced. But his assistant grimaced uneasily.

'Tell me, tell me Dorian – tell me you had nothing to do with that attack on us Dorian!'

He hesitated only slightly, but enough for me to know exactly what it meant.

'You did Dorian! You did!'

'You were never, ever in any real danger, Angeic. I made sur–'

'Made sure?' I stormed. 'Made sure you had all the publicity you needed to sell your idea of Tigerdroid police to the authorities!'

I lashed out, slapping him hard across his cheek.

I didn't wait for any reply, or any pathetic attempt at explanations.

Once again, I strode angrily away from Dorian, forcing my way past his assistant and letting the door slam shut behind me.

*

# Chapter 6

'Arrrghhhh! That stupid, stupid, ridiculous man!'

It was a question of either being incredibly furious or breaking down in tears.

Naturally, I chose to be furious.

As soon as I was safely out of earshot in the foyer of our apartment, I let all that anger finally pour out.

I caught the merest glimpse of Maria's back as, sensing my fury, she quickly retreated into one of the rooms leading off from the foyer.

'How could he? How could he _do_ that to me, when he knows what all that means to me?'

What had he done? Set the car's DNA locks so it would recognise some guy who was obviously working for him? Told him to wave the gun, to look threatening?

Yeah, okay, so I might not have been in any real danger, but I certainly didn't realise that at the time!

I glared at the large, tall vase of flowers standing in the middle of the foyer's round table, wondering for a moment if I should send it crashing to the ground.

No, no; what would be the point of that?

Maria would have it replaced in less than fifteen minutes.

And the real person I wanted to kick and spit at, Dorian, wouldn't even know I'd been angry enough to take his head off with a furiously uncontrolled swing of my arm!

There was a letter in the rack standing bedside the vase.

Letters were unusual. Especially at this time of day, hours after the first post.

It had to be a hand-delivered letter.

'Miss Annegeic Haverssham' was all it said on the envelope, misspelling my name.

Very crudely written, too, almost the hand of a child.

Printed alongside it was the familiar warning; This letter may contain undetected infections. Open only if you are sure of its contents or are aware of and familiar with the sender. Please note that you open this letter at your own risk.

Maria would have heat-treated and subjected it to her regular checks before placing it in the rack.

I slipped it open with the rack's narrow-bladed knife.

'Dear Miss Haverssham, I relaise you wasnt to blame for me been fired from the restraunt.'

The waitress who had caused all the trouble at the restaurant – it must be from her.

'I hope you relaise a job is important to me, as I have a mum, dad and three brothers and sisters to support. Been fired means no one else will have me or anyone else from my family. Maybe you saw what happened to Claire Proctor in Oak Tree Haven. Could you help my sister get a job by giving her refrences? If you met her I am sure you would like her cause shes not like me at all. please call me on 45tg 9s42. Thankyou. The waitress who lost her job.'

Oak Tree Haven. The TV soap about families living in Birmingham's outer districts.

I'm not one of its greatest fans, but even the newscasts followed Claire Proctor's firing from her job in a store as if it were a real event: her whole family ended up destitute, kicked out of what was already a pretty meagre apartment.

And I'm being held responsible for that, or its real-life equivalent?

I punched the number into my Mob, waited as it rang, wondered if I'd done the right thing when a nervously quavering voice asked, 'Hello? It's Kerrsly. Who's that?'

'Hi there, it's me. Angeic. Angeic Havisham. You asked me to call.'

'What?' Disbelief. 'Oh, right, course – I...I didn't think you'd ring!'

Her voice was already brightening, though I could still detect the restrained gulps of someone who had been crying.

'Thanks, thanks for calling!'

'Sooo...you said you had a sister who you think I could help get a job.'

'Yes, yes, that's right! If you could help her get a job, I'd be so so grateful. And sorry about earlier, sorry about in the restaurant I mean. It was your friends, not you, and I – well, sorry, sorry, I shouldn't have said what I said!'

'Yeah, well, that's okay – personally, I think firing you over it was a bit over the top, if it's any consolation.'

'It is, it is! Thanks for saying that, thanks so much! It does mean a lot to me, to know, you know, that you didn't think I deserved it!'

'Right – and your sister? How can I help her?'

'Well, if you only met her, you'd see what a nice girl is! She doesn't have the anger issues, the anger issues like I have – honest she doesn't, miss! I wouldn't expect you, course, to recommend her until you'd seen how nice she was.'

'Could you send her somewhere where I could meet her, talk to her?'

'Yes, yes, you could meet her – oh, no, wait! She can't get into the mall miss! She's not even allowed into the any of the Oases for a job interview, now I've been fired! Our DNA miss; it will have been noted on the scanners, won't it?'

Great. So now Dorian's inventions were also holding this poor family back from getting a job.

'Look, look,' I said. 'It's no problem; I can get my chauffer to drive me just outside the walls. Which gate do I need, and when can you get her to be waiting for me?'

'We live outside gate five, in the Arbour district miss! As for a time – well, I don't suppose you could do it now miss? I'm with my sister miss, and she's always wanted to meet you! She's always watching you on TV, saying how beautiful you are, how she wishes she was more like you!'

'Now?'

I glanced at my watch. Why not? I might back out of it if I had more time to think.

'Okay,' I said, 'but I've got to get there, so it will be more like twenty minutes from now, right?'

'Okay, right, that's fine miss!'

I heard excited, girlish giggling from someone with her, as if Kerrsly had just given her sister a thumbs up sign.

'But not in the district itself, right?' Thank goodness I wasn't getting too carried away with all this and retaining some degree of common senses. 'It will have to be on the main road – near the pull in to whatever that entertainment complex is called?'

'Yes, yes, I know that miss –we'll be there! And thanks miss, thanks so so much!'

She ended the call with the beginnings of an elated scream I probably wasn't supposed to hear.

I keyed a Codecall in to my Mob as I strode back to the lift, the one telling Claude to prepare the car for a short journey outside.

He would try to politely talk me out of it, that was for certain, reminding me how close we came to danger only yesterday.

Hah! What was I supposed to do? Explain to him that his master and creator was a lying, no good, conniving–

Dorian had just entered the foyer, smiling at me through the lift's glass doors as they swung shut.

No, no; it wasn't Dorian. It was Dorian A, of course.

He waved, drawing closer as I began to descend.

I waved and grinned back, my smile fading in puzzlement as I realised why I'd momentarily confused him for Dorian.

His cheek was reddened with the mark of a hard hand slap, like the one I'd given Dorian only moments ago.

*

# Chapter 7

'You sure about this miss?'

Claude, as I'd expected, was nervous.

Even as he drove, he kept glancing back at me, asking me again and again – as politely as he could, and in as many different forms as he could manage – if this was really such a good idea.

No, it wasn't such a good idea.

It was one of the most ridiculously stupid things I'd ever done.

It had seemed a good idea, the right thing to do, while I still fumed over Dorian's arrogance and betrayal.

As we'd slowly driven along the road leading farther and farther from the safety of the Oasis, however, my anger with Dorian had faded more than enough for me to realise how foolish this whole expedition was.

But I wasn't going to admit that.

Besides, I could now see the two girls waiting by the side of the road, right by the end of the junction where I'd told them to be.

There was no one else in sight.

No buildings or obstructions nearby where anyone else could be hiding.

This shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes. Then we could turn around and head straight back home.

'Slow down by these two girls for a moment please Claude,' I ordered, ignoring his question.

'Miss–'

'Claude, please; I'm only going to talk to them through the intercom. I'm not even putting the window down.'

I swept my hand over the buttons that cleared the window's smoky tint and switched on the external intercom system.

As we drew up alongside the two girls, I leant forward towards the window – and jumped back, startled.

It was less like looking through a clear window than staring into a magical mirror, revealing how you would look more than a decade into the future.

*

Before I could work out what I had really seen, the car door was wrenched open.

A girl with long greasy hair leapt in beside me, a gun pointed at my head.

'You up front, Apedroid!' she cried furiously, looking back over her shoulder towards Claude. 'She's dead if you don't put your hands up where I can see them!'

As she growled out her demands, the girl I recognised as the waitress slipped in behind her into the passenger compartment.

Ignoring me, she turned and opened the upper level of glass that separated us from Claude and the front seats. As lithely as a snake, she swiftly slid into the seat beside Claude and, using some instrument I couldn't see, began to switch off, smash and otherwise immobilise what I presumed must be the car's tracking systems.

'Where are you taking me?' I asked as coolly as I could manage.

No one answered.

Although the gun's muzzle was forced tightly against my forehead, causing me to slump back as far as I could in my seat, the girl's interest was mainly reserved for Claude, alert for any suspicious movement he might make.

I couldn't see the girl as clearly as I would have liked. The shadows were all wrong, my viewpoint too low, her face angled away from me.

But there was something familiar about her, as if she had attempted to model herself on whatever she had seen of me on the newscasts.

Is that why I thought I'd glimpsed an older, sterner version of myself through the car's window?

Had she deliberately copied the way I look to confuse me enough to leave me briefly off guard?

But how did she get past the DNA locks?

Surely Dorian wouldn't...

'Is this another of Dorian's tricks?' I demanded sternly

'Dorian?' She seemed genuinely puzzled by my question. 'What would that jerk have to do with this?'

Before I could insist on a clearer answer, I looked on in horror as the waitress raised a gun to Claude's head.

I screamed as she fired, the gun jumping in her hand with a muffled crack.

*

# Chapter 8

'Don't worry, he's not dead; just under our control.'

The girl was right.

When I'd heard the gun bark, I'd expected Claude's head to explode in a sickening, gory mush.

Instead, his head had momentarily vibrated sharply as, rather than a bullet, some form of small clamp had tightly clung to his scalp.

The clamp remained attached to the barrel by a thin wire, no doubt a means of regulating Claude's brain waves with electrical charges.

'Start up the car and take the second left,' the waitress ordered.

As if he'd received his orders directly from me, Claude unquestioningly started up the car and smoothly pulled away from the kerb.

'Why are you kidnapping me when I came out here to help you?' I spat at the waitress.

The waitress – or should that be ex-waitress? – didn't reply.

The girl with the gun spoke for her.

'Help her?' She allowed herself a bitter chuckle. 'She got herself fired on purpose so we could kidnap you, idiot! With all the rubbish you and your friends spout every day, we knew there'd always be something she could blow up into an argument that would get her fired.'

'And what if I hadn't agreed to come out here and help her?' I snapped angrily. 'How would your plan have worked then, little miss smart arse?'

She grinned.

'Well, that part of the plan obviously relied on you being unbelievably stupid.'

I bit my lip; she was right. I had been incredibly, amazingly, ridiculously _stupid_.

'What really amazes me,' she said, turning towards me, sending shivers through me as, once again, I suffered that strange experience of staring into an unflattering mirror, 'is that you went and did it even after someone had already tried to kidnap you. How incredibly stupid is that?'

She delivered the last line with a surprising degree of malice.

'Ah, but that wasn't–' I stopped myself; I was so eager to explain why my actions weren't as completely ridiculous as they seemed that I'd almost blurted out that Dorian was responsible for what had only apparently been a kidnap attempt. 'That wasn't you?'

'Sorry again, Cally.' The ex-waitress glanced back at the girl as Claude took the second left, as per his orders. 'I should have known I should have delayed getting fired when I saw the kidnap attempt on TV.'

'Not to worry Kerrsly.' The girl called Cally lowered the gun, digging it hard into my chest. 'Our little missy here might get full marks in the beauty stakes but, know what, she's really short on the little grey cells!'

Her eyes narrowed and darkened accusingly.

She sounded almost disappointed in me when she said, 'Don't you realise most folks out here haven't really got your best interests at heart?'

'Huh, like you do, eh?'

'More than you think, missy, more than you think!'

As we'd talked, Claude had taken a few more turnings, taking us farther into a confusing warren of apartment blocks.

Cally must have seen the growing fear in my eyes.

'Look, you're not in any danger from us; trust me, right? Please?'

As her voice softened, so did her face.

She even gave me a slight, wan smile.

Yet again, I had that odd sense of seeing myself in a frighteningly dark mirror.

*

Between and connected to the towering apartment blocks were the massive, multilevel farm and factory complexes I'd only ever seen in the TV soaps.

In the gaps between the levels, I glimpsed the flitting shadows of movement, of industry. Of machines and Droids toiling twenty-four hours a day.

According to the soaps I'd watched, the roles of overseers of the Droids were regarded as prestigious jobs; fought over, enviously sought, through cunning or even violence.

How much of that was true?

I'd heard that the soaps naturally exaggerated the happiness of families living in the Sections.

Even in the rose-tinted version of life we were presented with on TV, it was obvious that the dirty, poorly paid engineers who helped keep the machines running were princes amongst a population confined to a life of state-sponsored leisure.

Holding one of the rare jobs available to the Perma-Leisured meant the difference between an apartment in which the whole family were crowded into a couple of dingy rooms and one offering more space and a better outlook from the top floors of the blocks.

People stared, their faces creased in either worry or puzzlement.

An expensive car in their district could mean trouble, a visit from a dignitary carrying out an inspection or imposing new restrictions on travel.

There were few other cars on the road, and these were either carefully maintained older models or, even more likely, the result of a number of cannibalised vehicles. The passing buses were crowded, the later passengers clinging on to the outer straps and footways.

We turned off the road, dipping down a ramp taking us beneath one of the looming apartment blocks. Shadows fell around us, broken only by the suddenly bright glare of intermittent lamps.

Claude drove as if all this were perfectly normal to him.

'Here, into this bay – then stop.'

The waitress – Kerrsly – pointed off to her left.

Claude deftly swung the car into what appeared to be a tightly enclosed delivery bay rather than the more regular, open parking bays.

As soon as Claude had cut the engine, Kerrsly clicked something on the handle of what I'd originally taken to be a gun. Claude slumped forward across the driving wheel.

I instinctively jerked forward, only for Cally to roughly push me back.

'It's okay, princess kind-heart; she's just put him to sleep for a while, so we can have a nice little chat.'

She waved the gun, indicating that I needed to get out of the car.

'Don't try to run; I assure you there's nowhere safe for you to go around here.'

She was wrong.

As soon as I stepped out of the door, I caught a glimpse of a patrolling PoliceBot taking a watchful circuit of the underground car park.

'Help, help! I'm being abducted!' I cried, suddenly rushing towards the towering machine.

The Bot spun on its tracked wheels, the majority of its multiple–lensed eyes instantly focusing on me.

The other eyes whirled, quickly taking in its surroundings and the situation, whirring as they latched on to both Cally and Kerrsly.

Neither of the girls ran, or even ducked for cover.

I was expecting the PoliceBot's body to open up, revealing the protective cocoon available to anyone who had called on its aid. But the cocoon's doors remained firmly shut.

I crashed into the PoliceBot's body. I reeled backwards, slipping painfully to the floor.

The PoliceBot's gun had automatically appeared in its hand. The gun was pointing at me.

'Not me you idiot! I screamed looking up from the floor.

I pointed towards the two laughing girls. 'Them!'

The PoliceBot's gun was still threateningly aimed at me.

'Stay where you are!' the PoliceBot barked in a hard, officious voice. 'You're under arrest!'

'It's all right lanky – she's with us.'

The PoliceBot's gun vanished into its mechanical folds.

It moved back, away from me.

It looked towards the two girls.

'Lanky, make sure no one comes here,' Cally said, pointing towards the car.

'Lanky' nodded mechanically in agreement.

He spun around me, taking up a slow patrol just in front of the car.

Cally noticed my frustrated frown.

'Why do you think you still tend to use humans as your police?' she sneered angrily. 'Even out here, some of us know how to re-programme a PoliceBot!'

*

_'Your_ police? What do you mean, _your_ police?' I snorted irritably as Cally and Kerrsly aggressively pushed me ahead of them through the dank car park. 'The police are there to protect everyone – unless you manage to somehow persuade a PoliceBot to work only for you, of course.'

'They're certainly not _our_ police,' Cally said. 'They spend all their time making sure we know our place. Our place being this dump I'm going to give you a short tour of.'

'How long are you going to keep me here? What's going to happen to Claude?'

'Claude? Oh, yeah the chauffer. He'll wake up in a few hours, so dizzy he'll think he's drunk a whole barrel of whisky. We'll have moved the car by then, of course.'

'We? Who's _we_? Are you involved with all the riots we've been having?'

Both Cally and Kerrsly laughed.

'You kidding? When you live like this, riots can be pretty spontaneous you know.'

We'd come to the top of the steps leading up from the underground car park.

Not that it was easy to tell any difference. Beyond the towering blocks, the sky was naturally lighter, but we were still totally enveloped in their gloomy, depressing shadows.

The surrounding concrete was dark, rough edged and damp.

I'd thought it had looked bad from the car. Up close, it was even worse.

'I have noticed you still haven't answered how long you'll be keeping me here,' I said as they took turns to roughly push me along the narrow, confining alleyways.

They still refused to answer, remaining grim lipped as we passed by the towering apartment blocks.

Even from outside, I could hear the relentless clamour of each block's inhabitants; the screams and yells of children, the low hum of conflicting, multiple conversations, the whirr and screech of thousands of electrical appliances.

Clothes were hung out to dry on balconies crammed with bikes and futile attempts at bringing to life a few plants amongst this foreboding, grey landscape.

Odd bits of paper whirled past us in the wind. We clunked our way through old plastic cartons and tin cans strewn everywhere across the floor.

'I thought...I thought there were Bots and Droids that were supposed to keep everything clean!'

'I bet there's a lot of things you thought about us that turns out to be wrong,' Cally snarled.

Despite the squalor I had seen so far, I was still surprised when we came around the side of one of the apartment blocks.

What should have been a green – what always appeared on the TV soaps as a wide stretch of grass where people gathered and children played – was completely hidden beneath a massive pile of stinking rubbish.

No. It wasn't rubbish.

There were people, children, walking around amongst it.

Not on top of it, but through it.

Along walkways running between walls of metal, wood, card and cloth, like someone had gone to the trouble of constructing a vast maze.

And then, fool that I was, it hit me – it wasn't a pile of rubbish, and it wasn't a maze either.

What I'd thought were walls had roofs of stretched polythene or countless plastic bags overlaying each other like coloured tiles.

These were houses, houses made of rubbish.

'Who...who lives here?' I looked back at Cally and Kerrsly nervously.

'Me. And _some_ of my family.'

Cally emphasised the word _some_ like she was spitting it out in disgust.

'Me too soon enough,' Kerrsly said sourly. 'And my family. Now I've lost my job.'

'But...but there are plenty of apartments. And benefits to afford them!'

'Hah! That's what you're told, is it?'

Cally continued to push me into the warren-like lanes weaving between the small houses.

'Houses' was too grand a word for them.

None I could see was much bigger than my apartment's walk-in wardrobe.

They had been made from anything available; old advertising hoardings, stone and brick rubble recovered from the city ruins, the metal of old cookers, dishwashers and cars, all of which had been cut away and flattened to make walls and roofs.

Old, abandoned cars had obviously been a rich source of materials – as well as the metal sides, tyres had been cut and stretched to make odd, log cabin type walls. Windscreens had been used to make the only windows I could see, while whole car roofs were now the roofs of a minority of these 'homes'. Doors were of cloth, or wood that didn't quite meet up with either the walls or the roof edges.

'Why live here when there are so may abandoned homes in the deserted cities?' I persisted.

'Do you get all your info from TV soaps?'

Cally was scathing, her teeth almost bared.

'Do you really think the old cities are a pleasure ground, where there are all sorts of wonderful things just lying around waiting to be discovered? Like wonderful apartments, full of Persian rugs and leather sofas?'

I recognised Cally's description of an old city apartment featuring in the popular _Zone 28_.

'But the old cities, even the towns, were – well, massive, weren't they? Surely there are areas that could be re-colonised?'

'How long do you think those cities have been abandoned? How long do you think things last before they begin to crumble or rot or are just simply taken over again by nature? It's not just ivy and grass growing everywhere; some of the areas are mostly forest once again. Any underground pipes or cables have been destroyed by roots, ground movement, age. There's no water, no electricity, no gas. How would you like to live there, little miss know-it-all?'

'We've always been told there were more than enough apartments to house everyone.'

If that were true, do you think anyone would live like this by choice?' Kerrsly nodded angrily towards the crowded hovels we were passing. 'The apartments are overcrowded, as you probably heard when we passed them. Still, people prefer them to living here.'

She'd stop by the roughly made door of a particularly low 'house.'

It was a surprisingly well made door compared to what I'd seen so far, in that it fitted neatly and securely inside a thick, heavy frame.

More surprising still, it boasted what looked to be a crude, ridiculously-large DNA lock keeping the door firmly shut.

'After you,' Cally said to me brusquely, giving me a firm push towards the door.

'The DNA lock...' I began doubtfully.

'...shouldn't be any problem,' Cally finished for me sternly.

She was right. The door clicked open.

'Ah, of course,' I said. 'You bypassed the car's lock, so setting this to admit me would be easy enough. Let me guess – a hair taken from the restaurant, right?'

I couldn't guess how they'd managed to get the necessary DNA information from anything Kerrsly had picked up and removed from the restaurant. But I glanced at Kerrsly with a confident smirk on my face, hoping to give the impression that I had figured out more than I had.

'Yeah, okay, if that's what you'd like to think Miss know-it-all.'

The sternness had disappeared from Cally's voice.

There was almost a smile on her face. And a strange gleam in her eyes that could have been – what? Excitement? Triumph?

There was little light inside, but I could see enough to realise a woman was rising from her seat.

She was smiling, almost crazily. She was shaking too, like she was unsure whether she should stay where she was or draw closer.

'Kerrsly,' she said with obvious relief as the girl followed me inside.

Cally made as if to follow, but the DNA lock began to shriek out a warning.

'Duplicated DNA! Duplicated DNA!' its female voice rhythmically intoned.

Cally grinned.

The woman rushed towards me, her eyes wide and wild.

'It's her Cally!' she cried tearfully. 'It's _really_ her!'

*

# Chapter 9

'Course it's her mum,' Cally said flatly as Kerrsly overrode the DNA lock's restrictions.

Cally stepped inside, glaring angrily at the excited woman.

The woman seemed to interpret the glare as an order to calm down.

She shrugged, gathered herself, said, 'Yes, yes, of course it is, of course.'

She turned to Kerrsly.

'We'll obviously help your family as much as we can, my dear. You've done well, extremely well. We can't thank you enough for your sacrifice.'

'Sacrifice?' I gave Kerrsly a puzzled frown.

'The job. I sacrificed my job to get you here, remember? And my family will suffer for it, having to move in to the shanty town.'

'You'll get benefits–'

'Benefits?' Cally laughed. 'Haven't we already said room in the apartments is just about fought over? Lose a job, and you're seen as having thrown away your chance. You go to the bottom of the housing ladder.'

I was almost stupid enough to try and defend my position. I realised it was a dumb idea.

'So is that why you're living here?' I said instead to Cally.

'Didn't I also already say that some other things counted against me?' Cally replied irately. 'I've never had a job – probably for the same reason.'

'A seat, you should take a seat my dear!'

The woman was talking to me. She was indicating that I should take the chair just behind me.

The chairs were old car seats, covered and patched up here and there with cloth.

'Why do you want me?' I said, remaining standing. 'Am I a hostage? I'm not worth anywhere near as much as you probably suppose.'

Cally and Kerrsly laughed bitterly. The woman smiled benignly.

'You'll be free to leave soon, my dear – but we need to talk.'

Kerrsly headed towards the door.

'Even you must see we need to make some changes round here.'

'Yes, I can see that – but what do you think I can do about it?'

'I don't know either,' Kerrsly admitted as she stepped out through the open door. 'But Cally assures me you're important to the cause – and I've never known her to be wrong about things like that.'

As the door closed behind Kerrsly, I looked back towards Cally.

'Important? Me? I haven't got the faintest idea how you think holding me can help you.'

Suddenly, the woman rushed towards me, grabbing me, hugging me tightly. She was crying. Her voiced was a pained wail.

'Oh Angie, Angie, Angie! I was hoping, hoping there'd still be some memory of me in there, hoping you'd recognise–'

I pulled away from her sharply.

'Recognise,' I said, confused. 'I've never met you before!'

Cally stepped towards us both.

'Angeic,' she said calmly. 'She's your mother; your _real_ mother!'

*

'My mother?'

I laughed out loud. A nervous, cackling laugh. Were these people crazy?

'My _real_ mother's dead!'

The crazy woman standing before me looked crestfallen.

Cally just shook her head.

'Uh uh, Angeic. You saw the DNA lock screaming out a warning about duplicated DNA.' She pointed back to the lock as her voice became a sneer. 'I find it hard to believe myself – how could someone like _you_ be my twin?'

'Twin?' I laughed again, but more uncertainly this time. 'Huh; you just set the lock to scream that out, to fool me.'

'Have it your way,' Cally replied indifferently. 'So how come I got past your car's DNA lock so easily?'

'The hair or whatever it was you took from the restaurant. Somehow you created enough DNA strands to fool the lock.'

Cally laughed.

'Oh sure; as you can see, we've got all the laboratory equipment we need to do that!'

She indicated the bare room with a wave of an arm. The woman remained wide-eyed, fearful even, letting Cally do all the explaining.

'Somewhere else; you've got the equipment somewhere else,' I spat back lamely, knowing the equipment required was both expensive and sold only to respected agencies

Cally pointed towards the DNA lock once more.

'That's our equipment. Sure, Kerrsly managed to sneak out one of your hairs; I ran it by the lock, and the lock seemed to recognise it as being similar to my coding. Course, there were nowhere near enough strands to fool it into opening. Even then, I thought mum was being crazy, making out you were my sister.'

'I saw you on TV.' The woman spoke once again at last. 'I knew it had to be you Angie!'

'This can't be right! I screamed, bewildered by all this nonsense they were firing at me. I slumped into a nearby chair. 'My real mother and father are dead!'

'They were your _adoptive_ parents Angie!'

The woman had begun to move towards me. She stopped, held back by my angry glare.

'I know it's hard for you to take all this in so suddenly,' she said apologetically. 'I wish we had some way of showing you it's all true. You were taken as a child–'

'I was not taken as a child! I grew up with my real mum and dad!'

'Angie! Look at me!' Cally was staring directly, aggressively, into my face. 'Okay, so I'm nowhere near as pampered as you are; but just for once look beyond the scruffiness and try and see the similarities between us!'

'Similar? Me and _you_?' I barked angrily.

But it was all a front to cover my growing doubts.

What had I thought when I had first seen Cally staring at me through the car window?

I'd thought I was looking into a mirror, seeing myself as I could be if...if, well, if I hadn't been pampered and well cared for, yes!

I glanced at the anguished looking woman. Yes, there were similarities there too.

Similarities I'd never noticed in my...my _mother_.

But she _had_ been my mother! She'd been the one who raised me, who'd cared for me, who loved me!

I turned angrily on the woman.

'If I'm really your daughter, why did you let me go?' I pointed at Cally. 'Why did you keep her?'

'I didn't have any choice Angie! They came when your dad was out, out with Cally. They didn't know about Cally, otherwise they'd have taken her–'

'Dad? Where is he, where's my so-called dad? And who's _they_? Why would they take me?'

My mind was a whirl of questions.

Who were these people claiming to by family?

Why would they make such an outrageous, ridiculous claim?

Yet there was a part of me beginning to believe them.

My parents, like all proud parents, had taken a ridiculous amount of photos and videos of my childhood.

But I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen any of me as a baby. Or any of me before my third birthday.

'When?' I suddenly screamed. 'When was I taken? How old was I?

'You...you were just three,' the woman said tearfully. 'It was just before your and Cally's third birthday.'

*

# Chapter 10

I'm still not convinced; still confused, bewildered.

This has all got to be some awful trick, some cruel joke.

'But why? Why would they take me? And who – who took me?'

'The authorities, the government – whatever you want to call them.'

The woman says it with both hurt and honesty in her wide, tear-filled eyes.

'Why me? Why not her?'

I pointed irritably at Cally. I wasn't quite sure why I needed to know the answer to such a ridiculous question.

I was just finding it hard to think straight.

'They would have done, if they'd known she was an identical twin. They wouldn't want anyone out here with the same DNA – for obvious reasons. That's how your dad almost managed to rescue you. I'd made him a pair of gloves from Cally's hair. It was enough to fool the old style car locks–'

'Dad? Rescue me?'

'Usually, no one knows what happens to the children taken–'

'Children? You mean there's more, more than me taken from here?'

I'm angry, hurt.

They can see it too. They're both standing back. Trying to break all these things to me gently, slowly.

Now Cally's letting the woman do all the talking.

'Your adoptive parents were famous; even as a child, you were always on TV. We – both me and your dad – knew it had to be you. You still looked like Cally then. We were sure. Dad made a plan to rescue you–'

'Rescue?' I hate that word, the way she's using it. 'How could you _rescue_ me from my parents?'

I'd almost snapped when she'd said _adoptive_ parents. I really can't take all this nonsense much longer. I'll have – wait!

'You said fool the car locks! It was that man, wasn't it? The man who broke into our car! The man who killed my parents!'

'Angie! _We're_ you're parents! We–'

'Killed _your_ parents?'

Cally dashed towards me.

She suddenly halted, standing so close, so close like she's having to hold herself back from tearing my head off.

'Dad was the one killed! He was chased down, shot by the police! He didn't mean to kill the people who'd stolen you–'

'He infected them!' I snapped. 'They died!'

'Didn't you hear me? They hunted dad down, like a wild animal. And only because he wanted you back! I lost him because he loved you! Your so called precious parents died because you're all so closeted behind your Oasis walls! You've no longer got any protection against infections that don't harm us out here!'

_'They_ looked after me. _They_ cared for me!'

'And _dad_ cared for you so much he gave his life trying to get you back! Can't you see that? Can't you–'

'Cally, please...'

The woman had silently stepped between us, her eyes, her anguished face, pleading with Cally to move back a little and leave me alone.

'It's hard for her to take all this in.'

She curved her arm around my shoulders.

'It would be a shock for anyone my dear.'

'She didn't see the way you suffered mum, every time you saw her on TV.' Cally was still glaring at me. 'For ages and ages, I just thought she was crazy. I thought her and dad had to be crazy to think _you_ were one of us!'

She spat out the 'you' like I was the lowest person, the lowest _thing_ , on earth.

'But now, _now_ we know it _is_ her,' the woman declared forcibly. She was choking with emotion, near to crying. 'And now we have her back!'

She was holding me close, tightly.

It had been so, so long since I'd been held like this; so lovingly, so protectively.

'Do we?' Cally snarled. 'Do you really think she's going to stay and help us–'

She halted in mid-sentence, staring up towards the ceiling.

The woman's embrace felt stronger than ever.

I could hear the beating of her heart, of _our_ hearts. Feel the tense vibrations of blood coursing through our entwined bodies.

Then I realised the whole room was vibrating, rattling, throbbing.

Abruptly, the roof was being pounded by a fierce, rushing wind. It bucked and twisted, revealing huge gaps between the walls.

'Hawkdroid!' Cally screamed. 'We're under attack!'

*

# Chapter 11

The whole roof was suddenly yanked free.

It rose into the air, swinging off to one side. Suspended on a rope, it twirled in the pounding wind like an ungainly, broken pendulum.

The force of the wind pummelling down on us was now almost unbearable. Even my skin rippled like stormy waves.

As Cally had guessed, a Hawkdroid was hovering directly above us.

Its feathered belly immediately opened. As the clamped roof was finally released, letting it spin away and fall to the ground, more ropes descended, rapidly uncoiling as they fell down towards us.

'Police raid!' Cally spat, grabbing hold of her mother and pulling her with her towards the rattling door. 'Run!'

I'm saved, I thought, hesitating. They're here to rescue me.

Then the first of the police began to swiftly abseil down the ropes.

But they weren't the regular police.

They were Tigerdroids.

I spun on my heels, running out the door after Cally and her mother.

There was no predicting what Dorian's new Tigerdroids would be capable of doing.

And I didn't want to stay around to find out.

*

I ran.

Ran through the door left swinging open by the fleeing Cally and her mum. ( _My_ mum?)

Had they left me because they were more bothered about saving their own lives rather than mine? Or because they didn't think I'd be in any danger, thinking like I had that the police were here to rescue me.

They wouldn't know anything about Dorian's Tigerdroids, of course.

The Tigerdroids were already shooting at the fleeing pair, the laser bolts striking the ground just behind their heels. Other missed shots took away the corners of the houses Cally and her mum were expertly (and surprisingly lithely – had they prepared for or even experienced a chase like this previously?) ducking behind. They constantly changed their course to ensure they weren't an easy target.

But other Hawkdroids were hovering over the maze of houses they were hoping to disappear into.

Other Tigerdroids were already sliding down the extended ropes, threatening to block off Cally and her mum's route.

In many cases the Tigerdroids weren't even bothering waiting until they reached the end of the ropes; they leapt into space, landing on the corrugated roofs with a loud clattering before rushing across the house tops. They fired on the run at the fleeing pair, who weaved as quickly as they could down the winding alleyways.

Cally and her mum began disappearing into the houses themselves, coming out the other side through back doors.

I was finding it increasingly difficult to keep up with them. I was tiring, unused to all this running. (My long hours in the gym hadn't prepared me for anything like this!)

It wasn't just choking dust and filth flying up everywhere. The roofs and walls of the hovels were being rapidly destroyed by the Hawkdroids' downdrafts and the exploding laser bolts.

I'd been right to fear the Tigerdroids. Whether they were incapable of recognising me or had been confused by my similarities to Cally, their laser bolts seemed to be churning up the earth around me as if I'd been taken to be a member of Cally's gang.

This confusion of my role was as much their fault as mine; I tried to take a different route to Cally on a number of occasions but, finding the alley blocked by oncoming Tigerdroids, I had no choice but to duck into whichever hovel Cally and her mum had chosen to cut through.

It was as we were cutting through one of the homes that Cally, shouting out both a quick apology and warning to the occupiers, glanced back long enough to realise I was following them.

'Stay here you idiot!' she screamed out angrily over the cacophony of explosive blasts and shattering walls. 'It's _you_ they want to rescue!'

Her eyes opened wide in shock as the opening behind me suddenly darkened.

I spun around.

A huge Tigerdroid dropped down from the roof, blocking the doorway, preparing to fire at me.

With a surprised, pained groan, he was abruptly sent spinning backwards as a thick crossbow bolt thudded into the chest of his body armour.

'Come on then!' Cally cried out to me, clicking another bolt into place in her hand-held crossbow. 'Those morons are firing at you as well!'

She hustled me out of the backdoor, following on the heels of her mum.

I ran between them both, wondering if this is going to be my last day alive.

*

# Chapter 12

Cally hasn't got just the one crossbow, she's got two of them.

Her mum's got another two, and both she and Cally are experts with them. They take out Tigerdroid after Tigerdroid as they close in on us, using their knowledge of the maze running between the hovels to their advantage.

I don't know who's built these crossbows for them, but they're amazing. Bolt after bolt clicks back into place as soon as one's fired.

Cally and her mum smoothly replace empty magazines with full ones strapped around their waists beneath their billowing shirts. The bolts penetrate top-grade police armour like it's as insubstantial as the hovels we're careering through.

But our incredible luck can't last, of course.

A troop of Tigerdroids rush out of a side alley we're hurtling by, splitting Cally off from us.

Mum halts, turning to fire at the crouching, firing Tigerdroids blocking us off from reaching Cally.

One of the Tigerdroids aims directly at me. Mum tries to take him out, but she's already fired the last bolt of the magazine.

She dives in front of me, her chest exploding as the laser bolt meant for me agonisingly rips her apart.

She falls across me, sending me spinning backwards and dropping to the floor beneath her bloodied remains.

Through the milling legs of the surrounding troopers I catch a glimpse of Cally's pained face as she sees us fall in a wild splatter of blood.

She thinks we're both dead; I can see it in her glazed eyes.

She leaps up from the crouching position she'd taken. She barges and rolls past a surprised Tigerdroid, sprinting towards a ridiculously narrow gap between too closely built hovels.

She slips down the gap's narrow confines, the Tigerdroids too bulky to follow.

But they don't need to.

They take aim.

They fire.

Cally has to be an unmissable target.

*

# Chapter 13

They brusquely pull mum off me like she's nothing more than an old, worn blanket.

When did I start thinking of her as 'mum'?

Just a few seconds before she died, I reckon.

A few seconds before she gave her life to save mine.

One of the Tigerdroids unceremoniously straps me into a hoisting cradle. From the back of the harness, a wire shoots up into the air.

A Hawkdroid swoops past high overhead, its hoisting claws automatically sensing and clutching at the ascending wire.

The wire immediately begins reeling in, whisking me up into the air, swiftly drawing me up towards the door opening up in the Hawkdroid's waiting belly.

I look back down towards the ground.

What's left of mum's body is splayed across the dirt

Her face, thankfully, is remarkable untouched.

She looks like an older version of me, peacefully sleeping.

*

'Murderer! You murderer!'

Dorian was already waiting at the side of landing strip as the Hawkdroid landed in the Hippodrome.

As soon as I'd clambered out of the side door, I'd rushed up to him, my arms flailing, my fists striking out, hoping to wipe that smug smile off his face.

'What?'

He was surprised, shocked, stepping back as I lashed out at him.

His strong arms (he spends a _ridiculous_ amount of time in the gym!) curled around me, hugging me so tight and close that my arms were pinned against his chest.

'Is...is this all the thanks I get for rescuing you?' he laughed.

His laughter made me feel more frustrated and angry than ever.

'Rescue? You shot my m–'

I stopped. I couldn't say it.

What would he think if I said his dammed Tigerdroids had just murdered my mum?

That I was crazy?

That my mum had died ages ago?

And if he believed me, then what?

How could I explain everything that had happened to me? Explain that my supposed history was all a lie?

And if he knew my mother wasn't who we'd all been led to believe it was?

Would I be deemed 'compatible' with the great Dorian Nairod?

No; of course I wouldn't.

I might even be kicked out of the Oasis.

My God!

What am I thinking?

I'm embarrassed by who my real mum is!

A mum who gave her life to save mine!

All this flashed through my mind remarkably quickly.

But I'd still paused long enough for Dorian to take control of the conversation.

'They weren't shooting at _you_ , Angeic!'

I sighed with relief as I realised he thought I was complaining that the Tigerdroids had been shooting at me.

I had been planning on complaining about that – but not just yet.

'The guns were set to recognise your DNA; the beams would instantly turn to nothing more than just blasts of light. They only killed if they didn't recognise your DNA!'

I struggled in his arms, pulling back from him.

'You...you mean they wouldn't have killed me?'

He smiled, nodded.

How could he possibly know what the confusion on my face really meant?

My mum had died for no reason!

I'd never really been in any danger!

The gun's blast only became deadly because mum was directly in its path; and her DNA wasn't a close enough match to mine!

Wait!

What of Cally?

Her DNA would be an _exact_ match, wouldn't it?

So did that mean she'd escaped?

I smiled with relief.

Dorian smiled back warmly, pulling me towards him once again to give me a welcoming, loving hug.

Thankfully, he'd misinterpreted my expression once again.

*

I clicked through the three dimensional videos and photos in our family album.

The section where my proud mum and dad were taking every opportunity they could to catch me feeding myself, playing, jumping, falling, running, and whatever else they had found particularly amusing or endearing at the time – which was quite a lot of things, actually.

Strangely, I'd never really noticed it before whenever I'd browsed through this album but I couldn't find a similar high level of shots of me as a baby, or a toddler taking my first steps, eating my first real meal, that kind of thing.

Even of the few that were here, I couldn't remember ever being proudly shown them.

Which was a bit odd, yeah?

Sure, the odd shots were there right enough; I remember mum laughing as she'd showed me some of them when I was older.

Looking at them now, however, it dawned on me that neither mum nor dad ever appeared in any of these earlier shots.

It could have been, to be honest, any baby, any toddler.

Kids that age, they all look more or less the same, right?

'Cute kid; that's you, right?'

I whirled around.

I'd been so intent on closely studying the pictures flashing up on the screen globe that I hadn't heard Dorian A enter the room.

'Uhm, er, yeah, course; course it's me!'

I laughed nervously.

He noticed the nervousness.

He cocked his head, looked at me quizzically.

His eyes weren't quite the same as Dorian's, I realised.

Was it the colour?

No, not the colour – it was a sparkle, a twinkle of amusement.

A warmth that I rarely if ever saw in Dorian's eyes.

Was it _kindness_ too?

Or was it just that he appeared _interested_ in me, waiting for me to speak rather than laughing at my confusion as Dorian would.

Wait!

How had I known this _was_ Dorian A, rather than Dorian?

Because Dorian wouldn't look at me in this way of course!

A way of observing me like he was taking in every little bit of me into his memory.

Like it gave him pleasure to watch me.

To simply _see_ me.

I'd caught him watching me a number of times. But it wasn't watching me in the same way Dorian would – a way of ensuring he knew where I was, and what I was doing.

When Dorian looked at me, I felt he was more interested in taking in my surroundings, seeing how well or how poorly I fitted into them. Working out if I needed his help to conform to how he believed I should behave or appear.

Oh yes, he was always there for me, of course.

But it was as if he believed he _had_ to be there for me; otherwise, somehow, I'd stumble, or do something wrong, or make a fool of myself.

He had to take charge. To show he cared for me by controlling me.

Dorian A grinned sheepishly.

I felt like an idiot!

How long had I been staring into his eyes without saying anything?

'Well, who else would it be?' I said finally, foolishly.

'Who else?' he agreed with a smile.

He took a glance at the pictures I'd called up on the screen.

'Pretty even then,' he said. 'But I've gotta be honest; I'd never have guessed even such a pretty little girl would grow up as beautiful as you are.'

'Do...Dorian – Dorian _A_ – yo...you shouldn't be talking in such a way!'

I was angry, embarrassed, flattered, nervous, bewildered.

And foolish! Everything I was saying was coming out all wrong!

'Saying you're beautiful? Well, sorry; I just sorta seemed to notice that Dorian never seems to bother telling you that. Though, of course, I'm sure he's gotta be at least _thinking_ that, the way I see it. And so I just thought I'd say it for him; sorry.'

He was still too close to me. My skin felt strangely hot. My mouth dry.

What's happening to me?

I can't go falling for a Droid!

A copy of the man who will soon be my husband!

I stepped away from the screen, away from Dorian – _Dorian A_.

'Of course he tells me I'm beautiful Dor – look, is there something I could call you other than Dorian A? It's such an odd thing to keep on saying.'

He shrugged.

'Hm, could just be D A, I suppose. But that's still a bit odd, yeah? So how about Dan? Dorian always seemed a bit, well, pretentious to me anyway.'

'Dan?' I said it unsurely. It was a Perma-Leisured name. 'You sure about that?'

'Well, no, not entirely. There's lots of other name I'd prefer, to be honest. But I was just trying to think of something reasonably close to the one I've been landed with.'

'Well, your name's to do with DNA, right? So how about Dean. I'd prefer Dean.'

He chuckled.

'As your majesty commands: I will henceforth be called Dean!'

He backed away, giving me a mock bow and curtsy.

I slapped him lightly across the top of his head.

'Stop that!' I said ridiculously playfully, like I was some embarrassed little ten-year-old.

'Ouch!' he laughed, standing up straight once more and rubbing his head. 'Is that what passes for being knighted around here?'

'Knighted! Majesty! Just what sort of mind has Dorian given you Do – Dean?'

'Well, his own – Dorian's of course.'

'No, no – I don't believe that at all. All my friends who have accidently met you when they've called – yes, they thought you were Dorian of course. You played the part well, so they wouldn't suspect who you really were. But you slipped up.'

'Slipped up? I thought I had Dorian's mannerisms off to a tee; if you don't mind a bit of boasting on my part.'

I laughed.

'Ah, well there you are you see! Dorian wouldn't regard anything like that as boasting; he'd just see it as an obvious fact that didn't need any comment. And my friends have spotted it too – "Oh, he's so much more relaxed these days! He's much nicer than the last time we met! You're changing him for the better Angeic!"'

'Well, none of that is really to do with _mind_ now, is it? It's more to do with – well, what? How you regard others, I suppose. Like you, for instance; you said "who". You said, "who", not "what".'

'Sorry; you've lost me. I said "who" not "what"?'

I grinned, confused.

'Just a few seconds ago; you said I played the part so well, your friends wouldn't suspect "who" I really was. Not "what" I really was.'

I chuckled, not a little nervously.

'Well, I couldn't call you a "thing", could I?'

I glanced back at the pictures to avoid his gaze.

On the screen, a girl of around two or three was sitting in a toy car, grinning happily at whoever was taking the picture.

A girl who was supposed to be me.

But a girl, I'm now sure, who wasn't really me at all.

So "who" or "what" was I?

*

# Chapter 14

'But he _is_ a "what", isn't he?'

Dorian stepped into the room, raising a quizzical eyebrow as he caught me standing so close to Dean.

'Dorian. You can't say that!'

I was embarrassed for Dean, but he didn't seem in anyway upset by Dorian's rudeness.

'Of course I can! I created him, didn't I? Besides, he's probably the most important "what" ever created; far more important, in fact, than most human beings.'

Ignoring me, Dorian strode directly towards Dean.

'Our Dorian A here could improve the lot of the human race far more than any individual could hope to – hmn, interesting. Very interesting.'

Reaching out, Dorian had touched and lifted up Dean's chin, revealing a long cut hidden beneath his jaw.

'Another cut?' I whirled on Dorian. 'Dorian, what's happening to him?'

Taking his hand away from Dean's jaw, Dorian looked deep in thought as he stroked the same area of his neck where Dean's cut had appeared.

Now I reached out, tipping back Dorian's chin in the same nonchalant way he had forced Dean to reveal his neck.

Dorian let out a low, amused laugh.

'What are you looking for Angeic? Are you beginning to think we might be that connected that we share our cuts and bruises?'

Dorian's skin was faultless. There wasn't any sign of there having been any cut there at any time.

I let go of Dorian. He observed me with wry amusement, waiting for the answer to his question.

'Well, that's why you looked, isn't it?' he asked.

I nodded; yes. For a brief moment I'd wondered if Dean was suffering from Dorian's own shaving cuts.

I turned back on Dean.

'Did you cut yourself? Can you remember when you might have cut yourself?'

Dean appeared puzzled.

'No, I can't think of anytime I might have cut myself.'

Dorian frowned.

'Oh, so you don't think it might have been when you oh so helpfully decided to give Maria a hand moving things around down in the waste room?'

Dean stroked the cut beneath his chin thoughtfully.

'Yes, yes; when I was lifting up the bins – I suppose I could have done.'

Dorian's frown hardened.

'You shouldn't be endangering yourself in this way! I was serious when I said you're probably far more important that any single human! I was going to send someone to drag you away from that filthy room, but you thankfully put an end to it yourself and left.'

'There was nothing else to do; it's not a difficult task, unless you're small and weak like Maria.'

'The only tasks you should be taking on are the ones _I_ set you, understand? There's a great deal of intelligence and common sense built into you; use it in future!'

'Have you got people following him Dorian?'

I was bridling not so much at the way Dorian was ordering Dean around, but because I recognised it all as being hardly different from the way he seemed to be constantly increasing his control over all areas of my own life.

'Is that how you knew he was down in the waste room?'

'Following him?'

Dorian glanced back at me as if I were just a little bit crazy. He indicated the room with a wave of his hand.

'Do you see people following him around Angeic?'

Dean grinned as, stretching out an arm, he pulled up a sleeve, baring his flesh.

'Dorian's got far more sophisticated ways of keeping track of me.'

With the fingers of his other hand, he pressed down hard just above the crock of his arm. The skin temporally reddened, revealing in its midst a smaller, tablet-shaped patch of white.

'A tracking chip; under your ski–'

I gasped.

I spun round to face Dorian.

'How did you know where to find me outside in the old town?'

I ripped back my own sleeve, feeling my own flesh, pressing down hard, reddening the skin just like Dean had done.

'Angeic, you'd still be out there, a captive of those rebels if I hadn't taken the precaution–'

'Precaution?'

It was in a different place to Dean's, hidden away in the fleshier part of my inside arm; but as soon as I felt the small, soft disc, I knew what it was – my very own tracking chip.

*

# Chapter 15

Dorian had drunk so much at dinner the previous night that I wondered if he'd get Maria to shave him, rather than risking doing it himself.

He preferred the old way of shaving, with foam and a safety razor; he said it gave him a feel of the past, a sense of the way men used to be before the fear of an infection made them turn to the kind of electronic machines that should only be used for shaving a woman's legs.

But even he, after a night's heavy drinking, when both his eye and his hand would be unsteady, would have the sense to sit back in a chair and let Maria delicately fuss over him.

Today, though, he didn't call on Maria. He stood in front of the large bathroom mirror, stripped to the waist, running a bowl of hot water, and preparing the brush and foam stick.

'You sure you're up this?' I asked. 'You downed quite a lot last night.'

He'd taken me out, the best restaurant in town. To apologise for everything. To explain. To show he loved me.

_That's_ why he had asked for the tracking disc to be inserted beneath my flesh, during one of the monthly routine checks we all undergo; because he loved me. Because he didn't want to lose me.

So why didn't he ask me if I was all right about having a tracking disc?

Because he knew I'd flip. Because he knew I'd see it as a way of keeping tabs on me. Because I'd see it as a sign that Dorian believed I was pathetic and needed looking after all the time.

Yeah, I thought all those things, and more.

'Think about it Angeic,' he'd said, reaching out for my hand across the table, catching me in the hard gaze of his beautiful eyes. 'You're a prime target for kidnapping. You're about to marry – if I say so myself – the owner of one of the most important Droid manufacturers. Think what power they'd have over me if they held you; I'd do anything to keep you safe, to have you back.'

He'd smiled that smile that melts all my friend's hearts. The kind of smile that says, Hey, aren't I the cutest boy around when all's said and done?

'And that's why you won't let me smoke?' I'd replied, nodding at the huge cigar he was lovingly curling between his fingers. 'Because you care for me, yeah?'

'And that's why I won't let you smoke; because I care for you,' he'd repeated with a charming grin.

'But it's fine to cut _your_ life short, right?'

To be fair on Dorian, I'd hardly ever seen him smoke before; it was usually just the odd cigar, one foisted on him by an overly excited and overly eager chairman of a company who'd just signed a mega-deal with Dorian's company.

But last night, it was like he was wanting to try out every cigar in the tray the waiter brought to the table. Like he'd been denying himself all these pleasures for far too long, and now he'd decided he was going to make up for it.

Same with the drink; champagne, wine, brandy, whisky, vodka.

Not that anyone would have guessed he was knocking it back like he was filling up the car's gas tank. He wasn't even slurring his words. He could have been drinking water for all the effect it was having on him.

Perhaps that's why, this morning, he didn't seem to be suffering the hangover he'd so patently deserved.

His hand was perfectly steady as he slowly drew the razor across his foam covered chin.

His eyes weren't even the slightest bit blurry eyed either.

Had he developed some sort of new, miracle anti-drink and smoking damage solution?

I wouldn't put it past Dorian to test it on himself first.

He'd be amused by the surprise it caused. He'd love the shocked faces, the admonishing stares.

Love the fact that there was a secret reason behind everything he was doing.

And yes, things like that, he'd even keep from me for a while. Until he was sure that what he was working on was going to work.

Then he'd be telling everybody; the news rooms, the TV stations, the politicians. Telling them all that he'd managed to come up with yet another breakthrough.

'Why do you think Dean is so important?' I asked him casually, observing him in the mirror as I prepared my makeup alongside my own wash bowl. 'Not just as a replacement for Droids, obviously. There's something else isn't there? Something you're not telling me.'

His hand slipped. A spurt of blood appeared in the foam collecting around the end of his razor.

'Dean?'

He stared back at me from the mirror.

'Oh, I meant Dorian A. it's such an odd name, I thought it would be better to call him Dean.'

He smiled, patting the bloodied foam where he had cut himself.

'Better? Better to give him another name? And "Dean's" okay with it, is he? You just calling him whatever takes your fancy.'

'Well, come to think of it – I never _really_ asked him. He seemed okay with it.'

'Good old Dean, eh?'

He grinned, began shaving again.

'So, do I get an answer to my question?'

'I thought I'd already answered it a while back. You'd get the human touch missing from Droids, but all the safety of knowing they're not going to bring in any infections from outside; no more complicated heat treatments, or vetting. No worries, too, that they might be looking for a way to steal a strand of your DNA, so they can break into your car and kidnap you.'

'So they'd be glorified slaves, you mean?' I snapped. 'And there'd be even less jobs for the real humans out in the wastelands.'

Dorian briefly stood back from his washbowl, observing me curiously in the mirror.

'Seems you did pick up some infection when you were out there, eh, Angeic? What sort of sob story were they feeding you when you were out there with them?'

'Sob stories? They live a _terrible_ life out here Dorian!'

He casually returned to his shaving.

'If it's a mess out there, Angeic, it's a mess of their own creating. They don't have to live like that. They just expect us to provide for them all the time.'

This wasn't the time to argue about this. I'd never persuade him he was wrong until, like me, he saw how they actually lived rather than going by the false images we were constantly fed on our screens.

'You said Dea– Dorian A was more important than most human beings. Now, okay, I'll go along with you that there would be undoubted advantages over Droids and all the fuss over infections; if we're going to accept slavery, which I'm not by the way! But you said he was the most important thing you'd _ever_ created.'

'Yes, I did, didn't I?' He gave me his devilishly grin once more. 'Though I said "what", not "thing", if I recall it correctly.'

'Dorian; just _answer_ me will you! I don't think that even you would think creating human slaves would be the most important thing you'd ever created!'

'Hmn, thanks for the vote of confidence, Angeic.'

He broke off from his shaving, swishing his razor around in the bowl.

'I appreciate it, I really do. Because, of course, you're right. Think about it, Angeic; Dorian A's development could herald a much safer way for all of us to live. It's not inconceivable that I could play around with strengthening the body's own natural defences in any future models. Anyone with their own clone would know that, if they became infected at any point, they could be inoculated with the stronger defences of their copy.'

Models? He referred to Dean as a "model"? One that could be superseded by "future models"? So then what? Dean's put out on the scrap heap?

'And what do all these "models" and "clones" do while they're waiting around waiting for their "owners" to pick up an infection?'

I couldn't keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

Dorian languidly returned to his shaving.

'We'd keep them in some form of medically-preserved suspension, of course. You know, making sure they're not conscious of what's going on around them, but their bodily functions are still ticking over nicely. And they wouldn't just be of use when someone became infected; they'd be the perfect source of anything else that was required – livers, lungs, stomachs. Not just when they'd been damaged, but also when they'd aged. It would be the nearest we've come to a sort of fountain of youth. It would be a medical breakthrough.'

'Medical breakthrough?' I was aghast. 'Butchering, more like!'

He turned to face me.

'You're not thinking straight, Angeic. If this development had been around when your parents had been infected, there would have been a good chance they would have been saved. The whole infected area could have been replaced with healthy material.'

'Healthy material? From a living – wait! The liver, the lungs! Is that why you were drinking last night? And smoking? Because you've already got your sights on cutting out Dean's liver to replace your dodgy one?'

Dorian glared at me.

'You're still thinking of "Dean" as a "who", Angeic. He's a "what", remember?'

He angrily swiped his razor hard and brutally across his cheek, drawing blood into the white foam, turning it pink.

He smiled.

I didn't know what to say.

Silently but swiftly, Dorian washed away the pink foam with the warm water in the bowl.

He patted his face dry as the bloodied foam swirled away.

As he abruptly turned away, I could have sworn that his face was not only free of any running blood, but was also devoid of any of the cuts I was expecting to see.

I checked the towel he'd used.

There wasn't even a single speck of blood on it.

*

# Chapter 16

'That Dorian of yours, Angeic; I must admit I'd thought you'd tamed him at last and he was improving – but he's just as moody as ever, isn't he?'

Moody? Yeah, you don't know the half of it Gilleria.

We were in the _Chez Stadia_ for lunch, Gilleria, Fullerana, and me.

The manager Mr Bodor had greeted us effusively, with no mention of the dismissal of the waitress Kerrsly.

Fullerana nodded in agreement with Gilleria.

'I mean, Angeic, whenever we've seen him recently at your apartment, like wow – we all thought, what a change! You hadn't just tamed him Angeic – you'd transformed him!'

'Now don't go getting us wrong here Angeic – we all know what a fabulous catch Dorian is! He's got it all – the looks, the talent, the money. But the charm – yeah, only when he was interested in you.'

'Like he is _deeply_ with you darling, so you probably never noticed it, right?'

'See, whenever we called – whenever we _used_ to call – it was like he didn't really know us, or even want to get to know us; you know, like he just put up with us for your sake, but wished you didn't spend any time with us?'

'Yeah, but _recently_ Angeic – it's a whole new man who's been greeting us! Interested in who we are, what we've been up to; I thought, wow, is he coming on to us?'

They both giggled.

'Seriously though Angeic; whenever we come across him outside the apartment, it's back to the same old Dorian. Like he's got no idea who we are and couldn't care anyway.'

'So tell us Angeic; have you got him loaded up with some special drugs whenever we meet him in your apartment? Is that why he's so attentive?'

The giggles again.

I giggled with them, to show I wasn't offended by anything they'd been saying.

'Oh, I don't know why he's like that,' I said. 'Perhaps it's, you know, because he's one of those children who were adopted!'

I giggle again, to show I'm not serious about Dorian being adopted.

But I've been wanting to broach all this weird thing about children being forcibly adopted for what seems like a lifetime now; I need to know the truth.

The thought just won't leave me that what Cally had told me is true, even though I've been telling myself over and over again that it's far more likely that she'd used some form of trickery on me to persuade me she was my sister.

Think about it; if I accepted Cally's version of my life, I'd seen my mum gunned down right in front of me.

Just as I'd seen someone else I'd regarded as my mother eventually die after fighting off the man I'd believed was my attacker.

A man who might just have been my real father.

You don't just accept a version of your life like that without some sort of inner fight against the supposed-facts being laid out in front of you.

Gilleria frowned, obviously puzzled by my comment.

Fullerana chuckled wickedly, however.

'Oh wouldn't that be a shock for Dorian, eh Angeic?' she said. 'If he found out he'd been adopted!'

'Adopted? What do mean, adopted? Who's been adopted?'

I'd been right about Gilleria; she was as oblivious about any forced adoptions as I'd been.

Fullerana seemed to have at least heard about them. Just how much did she know about them though?

I kept quiet, hoping she would answer Gilleria's question.

'Oh Gilleria,' she said. 'Surely you've heard the rumours? Children from outside the Oases are sometimes adopted; they're raised as if they're a real part of the family, not even knowing they've been adopted.'

She paused, noting Gilleria's shocked face.

'Even you Gilleria,' Fullerana teased. 'You might be adopted, but wouldn't even know it!'

Fullerana chuckled devilishly.

Gilleria was scandalised.

'Me! I'm not adopted Fullerana! There are pictures of me as a baby! Pictures of me taking my first steps!'

'Oh, those,' Fullerana said dismissively. 'The adoption agencies provide all the fake shots; the false videos, edited sometimes to include younger versions of your parents. It's all very well done; very persuasive. It's a massive industry.'

'Why on earth would anyone want to adopt some brat from outside the Oases?'

'Isn't it obvious Gilleria? Infections; we're all prone to them, aren't we, in the Oases? But the children born and raised for a few years outside, where infections aren't so easy to control; well, ironically, the kids that survive have survived because they've built up an immunity. If you bring them into our community at an earlier enough age, you're improving our stick; just the way they used to breed horses, before it was deemed too dangerous to ride anything but some creature that was more Droid than animal.'

'You seem to know an awful lot about all this Fullerana,' Gilleria spat back. 'How come you know so much, eh?'

For a split second, Fullerana was taken aback.

'Well, you just sort of hear things, you know?' she said finally.

She blushed slightly, I was sure of it.

And the thought crossed my mind; did Fullerana know about the forced adoptions because she'd somehow found out that she'd been adopted?

*

Constantly telling myself that Cally had somehow tricked me into believing a whole lot of unbelievable nonsense had been the only thing keeping me from breaking down.

The only thing keeping me sane.

It had helped prevent me from grieving for the loss of my mum all over again.

Up until now.

As soon as I'd said goodbye to my friends after a hurried finish to the meal, I'd broken down and cried.

And cried.

And cried.

Claude had assumed I'd just needed a bit of privacy after I'd asked him to put the car's passenger compartment into complete sound proof and shading mode.

By the time we'd arrived back at the apartment block, and he opened the door for me, I'd managed to tidy myself up enough to hide the fact I'd been crying.

I held back further tears by telling myself there was an amazing positive in all this – I had a sister.

A twin sister at that!

And I was sure that _she_ was still alive!

*

Dean was in the kitchen when I entered the apartment.

He had his back to me, but it had to be Dean; Dorian would be at work, putting together his next earth-shattering development.

Dean was coughing badly. He was preparing a glass of sparkling salts which, with a sharp tilt of his head, he slugged back like his life depended on it.

'Seltzer? What've you been up to Dean?' I asked as I stepped closer towards him.

He turned, surprised. He obviously hadn't heard me enter.

'Splitting headache,' he groaned, finishing with a raucous cough.

There was a ridiculously bad cut across his chin, as if he'd fallen badly and accidently gashed it.

I instinctively reached out to touch his cut chin.

'You're cut–'

'You've been crying–'

He reached out to touch my cheek where, I presume, my makeup must have run, revealing a tear track.

We stopped, embarrassed. Unsure.

Our hands unmoving. Still touching.

Our eyes locked.

His eyes were bloodshot, blurry.

The spell, thankfully, was broken.

'Dean...' I said doubtfully, bringing my hand away from the cut to his chin.

He let his own hand drop away from my cheek.

'A "what" shouldn't hope for such things, should he – should _it_ , eh?' he said ruefully.

'Don't talk that way, Dean!' I scolded gently. 'You know that's not the reason! You're not a "what". You're a "who".'

'Like, "Who are you?" "Who do you think you are?"'

'You know what I mean; you're a person, just as much as anyone else.'

Yeah, a person who Dorian intends to use like some medical equivalent of a larder, his bit cuts out and reused.

But – it was more than that, wasn't it?

The cut.

The cut right where Dorian had cut himself on the chin this morning.

The cut that had somehow magically healed within a few seconds.

The headache.

The cough.

The headache Dorian should have had after a night of heavy drinking.

The cough he should have had after all those cigars.

It was like...like Dorian was already somehow...what? Using Dean to take on all the ills he'd suddenly begun inflicting on himself?'

Was I serious?

Was I going crazy?

Was that even possible?

Of course it wasn't!

I once again reached out to touch the wound on Dean's chin, wanting to reassure myself that I really was seeing a bad shaving cut in exactly the same place Dorian had deliberately slashed himself.

Oh oh; bad move.

Dean instantly got the wrong idea.

He reached up, delicately laying his own hand over mine.

He looked into my eyes with what would normally be his beautiful, kind, humorous eyes but – thank God – were today red, watery, pained orbs.

'Dean...'

'I know, I know.'

He regretfully let his hand drop away from mine.

'No, no... you _don't_ know! I...I'm just a little confused, that's all!'

Confused? Wow, that was the world's best underestimation of whatever it was I was going through!

Quickly, I tried to gather myself, to think seriously.

'Look, Dean...your headache. This might be a bit intrusive of me, right? But were you drinking last night?'

'Drinking? Ha! Dorian said there was none of that for me. Got to keep myself pure, see?'

Yeah, course you have. Dorian doesn't want to replace a dodgy liver with an equally dodgy transplant, does he?

'But Dean; you've got a hangover, right?'

'Hangover? Wow, if this is what a hangover's like, thank heavens I _don't_ drink. But it can't be see, _because_ I don't drink.'

'Sure you weren't drinking Dean; but _Dorian_ was. And he hasn't got the slightest trace of a hangover this morning.'

I paused, waiting for what I was saying to begin to sink in.

'And he cut himself badly while shaving; cut himself right where your cut's appeared across your chin.' I risked tenderly but briefly touching his cut once more. 'And there's no cut on Dorian's chin. It healed almost instantly.'

Dean frowned. He touched his cut, feeling the scarred surface.

'Angeic, I know all this whole situation is weird, this whole thing of my _existence_ and _creation_ is weird – but what I think you're implying is _way_ beyond weird.'

'I know, I know; how could there possibly be such an _incredible_ connection between you both? But, see, the symptoms you're suffering from; the headache, the bloodshot eyes, the unsteadiness – that's an A1 hangover, right? And get this; Dorian was really hitting the hard stuff last night, and the smokes. The last thing Dorian normally wants to do is any activity that might run a risk of harming him – unless it's to do with testing his latest invention of course, then all care goes out the window.'

'Could be he was just, you know, glad to get you back; celebrating like I would be if I'd thought I'd lost you but you were suddenly returned to me.'

'To _me_? What happened to this _it_ you were saying you were just a moment back, eh? _Me_ says you definitely see yourself as a person, right?'

He gave me an embarrassed grin.

'Yeah, how else could it be? I look human. I act human. I think human. Sure, I know I shouldn't be seeing myself in such a way. I just can't help it.'

'If it helps, I see you as a _me_. As a _he_. As a _you_.'

He smiled again, the warmth spreading into his eyes.

'That does help; helps more than you can imagine.'

'Dean...' I said it with all the tones of a warning, worried where he thought all this was going once again.'

His smile now was wry and wistful.

'Sure, don't worry, I get it; there's no _you_ and _me_.'

*

# Chapter 17

No you and me.

What a thing to say!

Why did I feel like I'd somehow been admonished for just – well, what? Pointing out that, yeah, although I _like_ him, it only went so far between him and me.

That's how it had to be. How it was meant to be.

I was meant for Dorian. Dorian was meant for me.

So why was Dean making me feel so angry?

Feel so confused?

What had he done, after all?

Shown he understood what I meant, that's all.

So why did he look so resigned as he said it?

Why did he just assume that was it? That that was how it had to be, that was the end of it?

Oh gawd gawd gawd; where am I going with all this?

*

Thankfully, Dean interrupted my chaotic, rambling thoughts.

'Look, if it's all this connection bit between me and Dorian you're trying to figure out, I think you might be right.'

'Right? That whatever bad things Dorian does ends up making you suffer?'

'It's not as impossible as it sounds. See, when Dorian was working on developing me, he knew using his own morphic field – the energies that give a body and even each individual DNA strand its shape as it's forming – would be the best way of ensuring a perfect copy. But he was worried that the fields themselves might end up forming a connection he hadn't even dreamt of. He was worried that if anything happened to me while I was in development, it might affect him in some way; perhaps even badly.'

'Ah, Dorian mentioned the fields; he didn't say they could end up connecting in a way he hadn't accounted for. But how come you know all this?'

'Well, it's not like I'm just some clone grown in some larger variety of test tube; the use of the fields meant my brain was formed more or less with all the knowledge Dorian had acquired over the years. Sure, I know – I know because of the very reason that I've inherited most of his knowledge – I know he was hoping to limit the knowledge and my emotional breadth using the techniques he's developed creating his Droids; but it didn't completely work.'

'Then...then you know how he intends to use you?' I was uncertain, horrified; had Dean known all along that Dorian regarded him as a pick and mix medical storage facility?

Dean nodded ruefully.

I couldn't help it; I reached out for him again, hugged him tightly.

He hugged me back, his cheek warmly resting against the side of my face.

I stayed there a moment, wondering what would happen next.

It was Dean who gently pushed us apart.

'There's...there's something I think you should know. Angeic – you have a sister.'

'Cally? You know about her?'

He seemed every bit as shocked as I was that we both knew about Cally.

'I didn't know her name. Didn't know much about her at all, apart from that you have a sister. What Dorian knows, I know, of course.'

'Dorian knew of her? But why didn't he tell me? _How_ did he know? No one knew Cally existed; her mum – _my_ mum – hid her from the authorities.'

'Dorian wasn't ever going to marry anyone without running a full check on them, including using his own resources. He'd guessed you were adopted; you'd be surprised how many are. Most people are worried their own, natural children will be too weak to survive the early years. Most adopt.'

'He knew but didn't say! You didn't tell me either, until just now!'

'In my defence and his, he didn't want to risk hurting you. It's a shock for anyone to hear they've been adopted; especially when it's a forcible adoption, and siblings are involved.'

'So...so why tell me now.'

He shrugged.

'I felt...felt too many things were being hidden from you. Such as Dorian's plans for me.'

'Don't worry; I won't let it happen to you like that?'

He resignedly stroked the slash across his check.

'I'm not sure there's anything you can do to stop it Angeic; not now it's happening this way.'

'There must be some way it can be stopped; Dorian will be able to work out some way of stopping it happening.'

Dean gave me another wry smile. I know what that smile meant; why would Dorian want to stop it happening?

How did you find out about Cally?' Dean asked kindly. 'Was it when you were outside the Oasis?'

I nodded.

'She might have been killed,' I said, 'by the Tigerdroids. But I don't think she was.'

'We could send out a message; invite her here.'

I laughed bitterly.

'Cally wouldn't come here, unless it was as the leader of some conquering horde. She hates how the Oases treat the outside world – and she's right about that too.'

'We could get you outside for a while again; using a ScoutBot.'

'ScoutBot?'

I wasn't surprised that Dean knew of an invention I'd never heard of. Some of Dorian's developments were so secret even I wasn't allowed to know anything about them.

'It's like a small, enclosed self-balancing motorbike that takes you wherever you want to be once you plug in the coordinates.'

'And you'd know how to work it; this ScoutBot.'

'As long as Dorian hasn't changed anything since he created me, sure. And I can download the coordinates from whatever I can find out about the Tigerdroid rescue mission.'

'And the tracking chip; how do I get rid of that?'

I pulled back my sleeve, revealing my bared upper arm.

'Easy; we don't remove, we just ensure it forwards the wrong coordinates using one of Dorian's ChipAway gizmos.'

Great; another invention I wasn't aware of.

'This could get you into real trouble Dean; why are you doing all this for me?'

'Didn't I say earlier that I was created knowing just about everything Dorian already knew? That means I know you as if I've known you for as long as he has.'

That wry smile again.

'You could say I was literally born to love you.'

*

# Chapter 18

Getting past the gates into the outside world wasn't the problem I thought it might have been.

I thought Dorian might have put out a warning that I wasn't to be allowed out.

Thankfully, of course, as 'Dorian' was actually there with me when I applied to go out, the guards just spent all their time gawping at the ScoutBot.

I had to admit, I thought it was a beautiful piece of machinery too.

Once I was out on the road, it was so incredibly smooth I could have been fooled into thinking I was flying across the tarmac. The seat was as comfortable as one you'd find in a limousine, the sealed compartment remarkably reassuring.

It was armed to the teeth, too, according to Dean. He'd given me a quick course in how to operate it, saying he wouldn't dream of letting me out if he hadn't had complete confidence in the ScoutBot to make sure I came back safely.

He wanted to come with me, but I'd told him Dorian would notice that two of us had gone missing.

I was hoping I'd be gone and back so quickly it would just appear to Dorian that I'd had a long day lunching and shopping.

The ScoutBot followed the coordinates Dean had fed into it. It wasn't long before I began to recognise the buildings Cally had forced Claude to drive by on our way to the underground car park.

I switched off the automatic drive and went into manual.

I drove down the ramp into the underground car park, looking for a particularly small and dark alcove. Parking the ScoutBot in the alcove, I used the remote control wristband to place the ScoutBot in camouflage mode.

Instantly, the ScoutBot appeared to disappear. Small cameras recorded the wall beyond, transmitting the images through material screens on the ScoutBot's surface and giving the impression that you were looking right through it.

I was dressed more in keeping with what I'd seen in the shanty town the last time I was here. My hair was tied up and powdered with a light film of dust. I'd scrubbed off all my makeup.

I looked a mess.

Dean had said I looked beautiful.

'Flatterer!' I'd chuckled.

'Stay where you are!'

I whirled around, wondering who had spotted me.

It was a PoliceBot – and it was aiming its un-holstered gun directly at me.

*

'You're under arrest!'

The PoliceBot drew closer, raising its other arm in readiness to fire and catch me in its net if I were foolish enough to try and run.

'You have no permission to be here!'

Could this be the same PoliceBot that Cally had managed to re-programme?

Or was it just a regular PoliceBot, on patrol?

Did it make any difference either way?

What had Cally shouted at the reprogrammed Bot? Lanky something or other?

'It's all right lanky,' I said as confidently as I could manage. 'It's me.'

The PoliceBot stopped making its way towards me. It completely halted, its head swivelling as if it were attempting to process this new information in line with what he was seeing before him.

'It's me – Cally,' I added, hoping I now looked enough like my sister to at least confuse it.

The raised arm dropped down by its side. The gun slipped back into the holster.

'Lanky, make sure no one comes here,' I said, indicating the apparently empty alcove.

The PoliceBot gave me a quick nod to show that it had understood my command. With an almost inaudible whirring, it took up position in the area surrounding the alcove.

With a smile, I turned and began to move off; then whirled back to face Lanky once more, an idea having struck me.

'Lanky, where did you last see Kerrsly?'

'Coordinates xv345, ps876,' came the mechanical response. 'Home Coordinates xz675, pj476.'

It would have been both meaningless and useless to me if I hadn't had the ScoutBot's wristband to upload the coordinates into.

The ScoutBot instantly transformed the information into a small map that came up on the wristband's miniature screen.

I couldn't be sure that Kerrsly was at home, of course.

But it was at least _something_ to go on.

*

No one paid me any attention as I made my way between the poorly constructed hovels of the shanty town.

Either I now blended in or people were just too busy to notice me.

I passed through what had obviously been the area damaged by the Tigerdroid attack. Walls and even the ground still bore the scorch marks of the laser blasts. Most of the homes appeared to have been hurriedly repaired however.

I considered searching for what had been mum and Cally's home.

No; Cally wouldn't be stupid enough to move back in. Not now that the Tigerdroids knew she had been based there before.

I was surprised that Kerrsly's home was in the shanty town. Last time we'd met, hadn't she had an apartment?

She'd said she would have to move out since losing her job; but would she have had to move so quickly?

Perhaps, yes, she had.

The wristband coordinates led me to an evil-smelling hovel surrounded by rubbish, as if it had been neglected for a long time.

Surely Kerrsly and her family hadn't been forced to move into here?

I approached the door of corrugated iron, uncertain if I should knock or call out.

'Kerrsly? Is Kerrsly there please?' I cried out.

The door sharply swung open.

'You! Haven't you done enough damage?'

It was Kerrsly. But she wasn't exactly glad to see me.

*

# Chapter 19

'You're endangering us just being here,' Kerrsly snapped even as she invited me to sit down on a contraption of tyres and old cloth. 'You brought down that attack on us last time you were here.'

At least she hadn't turned me away. She sent one of her younger brothers off to inform Cally that I was here.

'She'll want to know. She's been worried about you for some weird reason; as if _you've_ got any problems!'

'My problem is that I thought Cally might be dead!' I retorted.

I was going to add that I knew for sure that my mum had been killed. I'd seen that happen right in front of my eyes.

But I didn't know how much Cally had told Kerrsly about our real relationship. Didn't know how much Cally wanted _anyone_ to know about it.

'Seems you two got pretty close in the short time we were holding you. What's it called; Stockholm syndrome? Can't see why myself, seeing as how it's your fault her mum died!'

So, Cally hadn't told Kerrsly about our relationship. It's a good job I hadn't mentioned it.

'It was the Tigerdroids, not me! And they won't be able to find me this time; I've cancelled out the tracking chip.'

I bared my arm, turning it to show the white mark beneath the skin when you pressed on it.

'Hah, an _implanted_ tracking chip! We should have guessed little miss high and mighty would be better protected that we'd imagined. So you knew all along the Tigerdroids would be along to rescue you!'

'No, I didn't! I didn't even know I had one implanted!'

She observed me scornfully, like she didn't believe me.

'If you get Cally killed – you'll have _me_ to answer to!' she snarled.

I had to calm this conversation down before Kerrsly flung herself at me. She was simmering with anger.

'What happened to Cally in the attack?' I asked. 'I saw her heading down a small alley, with the Tigerdroids firing at her.'

I couldn't say, of course, that I knew the lasers wouldn't kill her because we shared the same DNA.

'Cally's clever; brightest girl – brightest _person_ – I know. Somehow, those idiot Tigerdroids must've missed, even though they had an easy target. Cally said she couldn't count on her luck lasting, so she threw herself down; pretending she'd been hit.'

'What if the Tigerdroids had fired again? Or checked on her.'

'The alley was too narrow for them to get down to check. She reckoned that they wouldn't bother firing again; there were so many flashes going on down there as she ran away, they couldn't imagine they'd missed.

Mainly, of course, because they hadn't missed; they'd probably struck her a number of times.

'Angeic!'

Cally burst in through the door.

She flew herself at me, hugging me close.

I hugged her back.

It was so so good to hold someone who, I now knew, was my sister. A part of my family.

The only _remaining_ part of my family.

Over Cally's shoulder, Kerrsly burned with resentment.

*

'What are you doing here?' Drawing apart from me, Cally glared reproachfully. 'It's dangerous!'

What _was_ I doing here?

'I had to see you again! To make sure you were safe!'

'Safe?' Cally laughed brusquely, theatrically, like she was auditioning for the part of a pirate captain in a play. 'That lover boy of yours needs to take another look at his inventions! Their aim's terrible!'

The theatricals were for Kerrsly, I realised.

Cally's eyes had locked on mine, like she was trying to draw the truth out of me; had she guessed right that she had been saved because of our shared DNA?

'I'll let him know your suggestion next time I see him,' I chuckled.

I stopped laughing. I drew close to her again, tenderly taking her hands in mine.

'I'm...I'm sorry Cally; about...about...'

'About mum?'

I nodded, feeling the tears welling up.

'She died, died protecting me. I...I wish I'd known her better. It's...it's...'

I broke down, weeping.

Cally held me close.

She wasn't crying.

'Mum wouldn't have wanted it any other way, Angeic! Her life for yours; that was no contest for her!'

It was good to let it all out at last; to have someone holding me who understood.

I'd wept when I'd lost my other mum, my other dad.

But there hadn't been anyone there for me – not _really_ there for me.

Someone who cared for them and suffered from their loss as much as I did.

Now, at last, I had someone I had a connection with, someone who could feel and share what I suffered.

A disgusted Kerrsly stormed out of the door.

*

Cally was proud of the team she'd gathered around her.

A mix of young men and women, they were incredibly physically fit and agile.

They ran across rooftops as if they had no fear of heights or death. They leapt, they somersaulted, they rolled.

Each seemed to have a preferred weapon they were particularly skilled at, whether it was a bow and arrow, knife or the latest gun they had somehow managed to acquire from the regular forces.

They wouldn't stand a chance against a troop of Dorian's Tigerdroids.

'I know; I know what you're thinking,' Cally said, somehow observing my distress through my forced smile.

'There are more of them,' she said hopefully. 'Teams like this all outside the Oases, training secretly.'

'But–'

'I know, I know. But Dorian can turn out his Tigerdroids like other people grow potatoes. But what else can we do Angeic? We can't go on living like we do; better to die fighting, you ask me.'

'Like mum, you mean?'

'Like mum!' she said proudly. 'And dad; dad would have fought too!'

'What were you hoping to do – the last time you held me, what were you hoping I could do to help?'

She shrugged.

'I'm not sure; mum wasn't sure. It was just that, I suppose, we, well, sort of hoped that if we could show you that you had a connection with all this–' with a wave of an arm she indicated the surrounding squalor – 'you might be able to persuade Dorian to take our side; not in a war, but in any political debates.'

'Hah, I'm afraid you don't know Dorian. He loves his inventions, his machines; and the people who buy them are the people who run and live in the Oases.'

She shrugged again. A resigned shrug.

'Well, truth is, we'd figured that might be the case. But we – me and mum – well, we also wanted to meet you; to let you know that we were here. And mum at least had always been concerned for your safety, your wellbeing.'

'Mum? And not _you_ , then?'

That shrug again. Proud this time.

'I wasn't sure you were my sister, remember? I couldn't see the connection then – between me, and what I saw of you on screen, in all those fancy dresses, at all those fancy dos.'

Who had turned out best? Me or Cally?

Cally, I reckoned.

'I could go back, try and persuade him. Dorian, I mean. It's suicide to take on the–'

'Tigerdroids! The Tigerdroids are attacking!'

*

# Chapter 20

The warning cry rang out.

Too late.

The Tigerdroids moved swiftly, professionally.

The fleet of Hawkdroids were hovering high above, almost disappearing in the glare of the sun when you gazed skywards.

The Tigerdroids were abseiling down ropes, ropes that, despite being incredibly long, stopped way short of the hovel rooftops.

The Tigerdroids simply let go of the ropes, dropping down onto the rooftops. They curled into balls and went into deftly controlled rolls to absorb most of the colossal impact of the fall. Some struck the weak roofs so hard they simply crashed through into the house below.

They rose to their feet already firing at anyone who appeared armed or a threat. (Not that anyone here was a real threat to a Tigerdroid troop.) They sprang from roof to roof, or rushed through the alleyways.

Everywhere I looked, Cally's friends were fighting back bravely but foolishly. I saw a few simply vanish in a pink cloud of vaporised flesh and blood as a laser bolt hit them full on.

Even if they tried to run, whether to flee because they realised it was hopeless or to take up better defensive positions, they would be brought down in mid somersault or leap.

All of their exercising and training counted for nothing against the far better armed and stronger Tigerdroids.

I realised I had to bring a swift end to all this killing and butchery by surrendering myself to my 'rescue team'.

'Stop, stop!'

I shouted a loud as I could, waving my arm to bring attention to myself as I rose up from behind a pile of rubbish bins. I'd instinctively ducked behind them when the attack had started.

A deflected laser bolt rushed past my arm.

Ahhhrrrgggg!

God, that _hurt_!

But it shouldn't hurt – not if they'd set their guns to recognise my DNA.

Those idiots haven't set their guns to recognise my DNA!

The thought struck me almost as painfully as the misdirected laser bolt.

If I was going to give myself up, I couldn't just go running towards them waving my arms; I'd probably be hit and killed.

Then I saw that there was a chance of surrendering without getting killed after all – the attack was being directed by a human officer, crouching on top of one of the hovels,

He'd recognise me, even in this confusion – he was wearing a combat helmet, which meant he'd have telescopic sighting. He'd realise that their ultimate task was to rescue me, not wipe out a pathetically small band of 'rebels'.

'Stop, stop!' I shouted once again, this time trying to direct my cries at the crouching officer. 'It's me, Angeic!'

Somehow, it worked. Perhaps it was the magic word 'Angeic' that he'd picked up on his helmet's sound scopes.

He turned to look at me.

Just in case a murderous Tigerdroid had also spotted me, I ducked back behind the bins, but continued to tentatively peer above them and wave an arm at the officer.

The smoked glass visor of his helmet was directly facing me.

He raised his gun.

And he fired.

*

Suddenly, I was flying off to one side.

The laser bolt crackled and sizzled in the air as it whooshed over me, taking out the edges of the bins where my head had been only a split second before.

'They're not here to rescue you!'

Lying heavily on top of me, after brutally barging into me to save me from the officer's shot, Cally breathed harshly into my ear.

'This is an attack on us; we've been expecting it for some time.'

Before I could answer, she had leapt up from the floor into a supple crouch.

'Stay down; you can't do anything!' she barked as she moved off quickly in a stooping run. 'I'll draw that officer away from you just in case he's decided to finish you off!'

She deftly, expertly fired as she ran. The chests and heads of any nearby Tigerdroids exploded or jerked back unnaturally.

Nervously peeking from behind the bins, I saw that the officer had been rushing across the rooftops to finish me off. Seeing Cally, however, he quickly changed course, now pursuing her instead.

I suddenly felt incredibly anxious for Cally. The officer was amazingly athletic, dashing along the hovel tops with an almost feminine litheness.

Once again, someone from my new-found family was risking their life to save mine.

I had never, ever felt so useless!

*

# Chapter 21

I had been so intent on watching Cally that I hadn't realised I was in every bit as much danger.

A couple of Tigerdroids were heading towards me, moving in for a closer shot.

Between me and Cally, one of the Tigerdroids who had managed to avoid her blistering rate of fire was now raising his own gun to fire at me.

Abruptly, the corner of the house he was standing on disintegrated in an explosion of old boarding, iron and brick, catapulting him high into the air.

Although the laser blast that had come from behind me had been aimed at the Tigerdroid, it was also a powerful enough explosion to send the officer pursing Cally reeling. He was sent sprawling across the roof he'd been running across, slipping over the edge into the alleyway beyond.

Another blast from behind me immediately followed, striking the encircling Tigerdroids, doing more damage to them than Cally's rebels had inflicted in the last few minutes. It also sent another human officer whirling into the air, although he appeared otherwise untouched.

Spinning around to thank my rescuer, I saw the ScoutBot careering towards me, crashing through and demolishing anything in its way.

Before I even had chance to work out that it had realised I was in trouble thanks to my wristband (a mix of detecting my pulse rate, tension and sweat profusion) the ScoutBot's door had automatically opened, the seat swinging out to scoop me up into it's comforting embrace.

Three more shots followed from its revolving guns, splattering a number of Tigerdroids who had made the mistake of trying to aim at me. The other Tigerdroids, the ones intent on hunting down Cally and her rebels, the ScoutBot seemed to automatically leave alone.

It was only me that it had been programmed to protect.

As soon as it had me safely cocooned within its armoured compartment, it swung around sharply. I was flung back into the seat as it accelerated away, letting off a final couple of shots towards two potentially threatening Tigerdroids detected by its sensors.

'No, no, stop! You're going the wrong way!' I uselessly screamed at the ScoutBot. 'We should be helping Cally!'

In frustration, I pummelled the compartment's interior in a fruitless effort to open the door. I pushed at buttons on the controls, tried to switch to automatic; all to no avail.

Saving me overrode all its other considerations.

And that meant I was once again leaving Cally to face the troubles I'd brought down on her.

*

The ScoutBot didn't even begin to slow until it seemed to work out that I was no longer in any immediate danger.

At last, it let me take over a modicum of control. I swung the bike around so that I could glance back through the (still firmly closed) windows towards where the attack was taking place.

With silent whirrs, the Hawkdroids were lifting up into the air once more.

The last of the Tigerdroids were being swiftly hoisted back aboard the last Hawkdroids.

The last explosions, the last bangs and clatters, were taking place amongst the maze of hovels they were rapidly leaving behind.

I pressed on the ScoutBot's door handle. The door swung open.

When I stepped out, it was eerily quiet for a moment.

Then the pained and anguished wailing began.

*

# Chapter 22

I drove the ScoutBot back towards the area of attack as quickly as we had left it.

Plumes of smoke were rising everywhere,

People, young and old, were walking around in a dishevelled, broken daze.

Alleyways were blocked with crumbled rubble and large segments of roofs and walls.

Shattered bodies lay amongst the rubble. Friends and family bent over the corpses, mourning, or tended the wounded.

They looked up, glared at me, seeing the ScoutBot for what it really was; an intrusion on their world, a deadly invention of the Oases.

I didn't recognise anyone. I couldn't recall what any of the people I'd been introduced to only that morning looked like.

Then I saw Kerrsly.

Like so many others that I'd seen as I slowly drove through the ruins, she was sorrowfully crouched over a broken body.

She glanced up as she sensed the presence of the oncoming ScoutBot.

I brought the bike to a halt, not wishing to startle anyone further.

I slipped out the door as it automatically swung open with a whistling purr.

'Kerrsly. It's only me,' I said loud enough for her to hear but not enough to alarm her.

It might be one of her brother's or a close friend she was mourning.

'Sorry to interrupt; but have you seen Cally?' I asked.

Her eyes widened crazily.

She sprung to her feet, sprung towards me.

'Murderer, murderer!' she screamed.

The ScoutBot's guns swiftly whirred into firing position, preparing to fire at Kerrsly if they thought she posed a threat.

'Stop, stop Kerrsly,' I cried out, running towards her with my arms raised. I deliberately positioned myself between her and the guns. 'The ScoutBot will shoot if you don't stop!'

Either Kerrsly didn't hear or didn't care. She continued to rush towards me.

Quickly, I unsnapped the wristband.

Damn, why didn't I think of that before?

I glanced back to check that the ScoutBot no longer considered me to be in danger.

The guns slid back home.

'Kerrsly I–'

She violently threw herself at me.

She punched, spat, bit, scratched.

'Kerrsly, I didn't–'

'I saw you, I saw you!'

'I saw you too! Get up!

A young guy was leaning over us, pointing his gun at my head.

I thought about snapping my wristband back on.

I thought about seeing the guy hovering over me disappearing in an explosion of flesh and blood, what little remained of him splattering all over me.

I left the wristband off.

A number of other people had arrived, dragging Kerrsly off me. Others brusquely grabbed me by my arms, pulling me to my feet.

'Look, I'm sorry–'

'Sorry?' Kerrsly screamed, trying to break free of those holding her and throw herself at me once again. 'Sorry!'

The young guy holding the gun grimaced, like he was fighting the urge to shoot me.

'Take her!' he screamed at the boys pinning my arms behind my back, using a wave of his gun to indicate that I should be dragged off to one of the nearby houses.

'It was the ScoutBot that–'

The guy stuck me hard across the face with his gun, stunning me, shocking me.

'Shut it! I _saw_ what happened! _Kerrsly_ saw what happened! We don't need to hear anything from you! We just need to decide how we're going to kill you!'

'Ki...kill me? Look, I didn't mean to desert yo–'

'Take her! Take her before I shoot her right now!'

They brutally pushed and pulled me towards the house.

Why was no one giving me the chance to explain that I hadn't meant to leave them to face the Tigerdroids?

I hadn't intentionally deserted them!

It had been the ScoutBot that had carried me away, and I hadn't had any control over it.

'The ScoutBot was protecting me! It–'

'You didn't need any protection from what I saw!' the guy with the gun snapped.

I was being dragged past the pile of rubble where I had first seen Kerrsly mourning the limp body strewn across it.

It was a girl, I could see that now.

A girl with long, dark hair.

Oh my God!

It was Cally!

Cally had been killed!

'Cally! Cally!' I screamed, trying to break free of my captors and rush towards her blood-spattered body. 'Please, please, you don't understand–'

'Save the crocodile tears,' the guy snarled. 'I understand perfectly.'

They pushed me into the darkness of the house.

'I _saw_ you,' the guy continued to snarl. 'I _saw_ you kill Cally!'

*

# Chapter 23

How could he have seem me kill Cally?

It was impossible!

I wasn't even there!

I wouldn't kill Cally anyway; she was my sister!

'This is madness!' I insisted, struggling against the painful bounds they'd used to tie me to an old wooden chair. 'I didn't kill Cally! I wasn't anywhere near her! She was my _sister_!'

'Sister?' Kerrsly sneered. 'No one kills their own sister!'

Everyone seemed to take Kerrsly and the young guy's word that they'd seen me kill Cally.

My version of events obviously didn't count.

'Is that how it happens in this brave new world of yours?' I snapped. 'If someone accuses you of something, you're executed, no further questions asked? Whatever happened to proof? Don't you need proof that I killed her, rather than just taking someone's word for it?'

'We _have_ proof!' Kerrsly retorted angrily. 'It was all videoed; we always record the trainings sessions, so we can look back and see how we can improve what we're doing!'

'Videoed?' I was shocked, curious.

Had Cally's death really been recorded? Was I being ridiculously morbid in wanting to see how it had all happened?

'Can...can I see it? Please?'

'You want to gloat over how you killed her?'

Kerrsly spat in my face. She would have launched herself at me once again if a tall, athletic young man hadn't rushed forward to pull her back.

The young guy who had effectively taken control after Cally's death – I'd heard the others calling him Drad – frowned yet nodded.

'She's right Kerrsly. We're no better than the Oases if we condemn someone without showing them all the proof stacked up against them.'

With a wave of an arm, he indicated that a gawky girl should begin quickly setting up the equipment to project the video in front of me.

It was surprisingly impressive equipment. Even as the virtual screen flickered into life in the air just before me, I realised it was three dimensional imaging.

The small square that had served as the centre of the training session opened up before me.

The view took in the walls and rooftops of the houses Cally's team had used earlier to scale and leap across. Here, however, there were glimpses of swiftly moving Tigerdroids rushing across the rooftops, firing at unseen targets down in the alleys, or some way off screen.

It was a mismatched battle of screams, shouts, orders and explosions.

Then, abruptly, the tide seemed to be turning.

First, a Tigerdroid was blasted in mid leap from roof to roof. Then, secondly, another flew backwards as his chest opened up in a thick spout of blood.

A third fell, then a fourth, the shots bringing them down coming from first one place then another, often even through the thin roofs of the houses themselves.

The only way of determining where the firer might be – or, rather where the firer had been only a moment ago – was to presume the pursuing human officers racing across the hovel-tops were aiming their returning shots relatively accurately.

Like the person they were following, they fired through the roof tops when they had to, or down into the alleyways whenever their prey obviously dashed between the houses.

Suddenly, one of the officers was sent spiralling backwards. One of the shots fired up from a hovel's interior caught him on one side of his body, jerking his head back awkwardly.

Suddenly, Cally was rushing almost directly towards us as she crashed through a flimsy door.

The officer, seeing his prey at last break out into the open, put on a fresh burst of speed. He brought up his gun, aiming it at the fleeing Cally's head.

As if either sensing or anticipating the bolt that was about to cleave her head in two, Cally threw herself into an angled roll. She came out of it facing the other way and in a crouch, her gun already raised.

She fired immediately, knowing time was precious.

Her bolt might have struck the pursuing officer, only he moved equally as quickly, equally as instinctively as Cally. He threw himself off to one side.

But he was unlucky.

He landed hard on a particularly weak part of the hovel's structure. The roof, then the walls, crumbled, gave away.

He slipped down to the ground in an avalanche of heavy rubble, his gun flying from his hand.

Cally rushed towards him, her gun staying directly aimed at his helmeted head.

Perhaps she was going to kill him. Maybe she hoped she could threaten his life and command him to call off his troops.

The officer suddenly whipped of his helmet – and I was as shocked, as frozen to the spot, as Cally was.

It was me! The officer facing Cally was me!

*

# Chapter 24

'Ang...Angeic?' Cally spluttered unsurely.

It was enough of a hesitation for the officer to reach for the gun that had fallen just out of her reach.

Stunned, Cally was too slow to react.

The officer fired at point blank range, striking Cally hard in the chest.

As Cally fell, the officer rose, slipping her helmet back on.

She must have given an immediate order to withdraw for, abruptly, a retractor-cord shot up into the air from her back pack.

In the blink of an eye, she was whisked up out of sight as one of the unseen Hawkdroids hovering above instantly grabbed the climbing cord.

To the sounds of an eerie whispering, the Tigerdroids similarly soared into the air, effectively vanishing from shot as if fired skyward by rocket boots.

Cally was left alone, dead amongst the rubble.

*

'It wasn't me! I wasn't there.'

I looked around at their disbelieving faces.

'You _know_ I wasn't there. I was with you!'

Once again, I was met with looks of disbelief.

They shook their heads.

No, I hadn't been with them.

'No one knew where you were.'

Drad scowled as he spoke, like he was tiring of all this and wanted it all to come to a swift end.

'We don't know how you did it, but you brought the Tigerdroids down on us once more. And somehow even managed to join them for the attack.'

'You hoped no one would recognise you in your helmet,' someone else added.

'It was an operation to take out Cally,' Drad said assuredly. 'As soon as she was dead, you called off the attack.'

'Then you re-joined us, hoping we'd all be fooled into thinking you'd been with us all along!'

Kerrsly still had a murderous glare in her eye, even if she had calmed down so much that she no longer had to be held back from killing me.

'No, no!' I persisted. 'It was the ScoutBot; the ScoutBot took me away. That's why no one saw me here.'

They swapped looks that implied they were all wondering how much longer all this nonsense was going to go on.

'That that dangerous thing outside?' somebody asked.

'Yeah, won't let anyone close without aiming a gun at us!'

'The thing she arrived back here in!' Kerrsly snapped triumphantly. ' _That's_ how she left us and then got back so quickly!'

'Can't see as how that Oasis contraption is supposed to be part of your defence,' Drad declared casually.

'Look, if I'd killed Cally, if that's what I was here to do, why did I come back? It doesn't make any sense.'

Some of them shrugged, like they couldn't figure out an answer, but they couldn't see how it was anything important either.

'You just tried to make out Cally was your sister,' Drad said with the confidence of someone thinking he was seeing all the pieces falling into place. 'Perhaps you were hoping to take Cally's place; handing us all on a plate to your husband Dorian.'

'She was my sister!'

'So why'd she never tell me? Never tell any of us?' Kerrsly demanded. 'Is that such a hard thing for her to say; "Hey guess what, I've got a long-lost sister!"?'

It was hopeless!

No matter what I said, it counted against me.

'Wait, wait!'

How stupid could I be? I'd been so shocked by everything that had happened to me – losing my sister, being accused of killing her, then actually seeing a video of me shooting her! – that I hadn't been thinking logically.

Dorian had made a copy of me just as he'd made a copy of himself!

The officer who shot Cally was Angeic A, or whatever Dorian had called her.

'It wasn't me that shot Cally, of course!' I cried out excitedly. 'It was a _copy_. A copy of _me_!'

They each swapped bewildered glances.

Then they all laughed.

*

# Chapter 25

Freeing me from the chair but keeping my hands tied, they dragged me outside into the square where I had supposedly killed Cally.

The sun seemed so much brighter after being held inside the dim hovel.

I blinked painfully, trying to adjust my eyes to the change.

'I'm serious!' I continued to protest. 'Dorian can make copies, using DNA!'

'How come we never heard? An invention like that – it would be on the news everywhere.'

Drad grimaced, like he wanted to believe me, if only to save himself from having to execute me in cold blood. But his face was also creased with frustration, like he was tiring of all this useless chatter. All these lies.

'It's still a secret, still in development!'

Towards the other end of the square, I could see the ScoutBot.

A handful of the rebels were nervously attempting to draw closer to it, doubtlessly eager to discover its secrets so they could turn them to their own advantage. But the ScoutBot sensed the danger and, like a cornered yet supremely confident animal, it backed off, jerked forward, swiftly twirled around, its wide array of guns constantly directed at anyone drawing too near.

If only I'd continued wearing the wristband! I'd be saved and out of here in a moment!

Leaving behind all of Cally's painstakingly trained rebels dead upon the floor.

Perhaps it was for the best that the wristband had been snatched off me. It removed any temptation I might have to slip it back on.

'Even I've only seen one copy so far!' I persevered. 'Well, two now, now he's made one of me!'

'Why'd he want two of you, eh?' someone complained, wearying of my pleas to be believed.

'This has gone on long enough!' Drad growled, taking me by an arm and forcing me to my knees.

There weren't as many people surrounding me as there had been only moments before.

They didn't want to see me killed. Not because they didn't think I deserved it. But because they'd probably never been faced with something like this; seeing a defenceless girl executed.

Some of them had returned to their homes. I heard their TVs being switched on, turned up loud to drown out the crack of the shot.

Drad glanced nervously about him, swapping the gun from hand to hand, rubbing them as if he were attempting to keep them free of sweat.

Kerrsly saw his nervousness.

'I'll do it,' she said, taking out her gun and stepping in front of me. 'Cally was my friend.''

'Friend?' Humiliated by the comparison of Kerrsly's determination with his own edginess, Drad took his frustration out on her. 'I figured you wanted it to be more than that Kerrsly!'

Kerrsly pursed her lips angrily. She placed the barrel of the gun hard against my forehead.

Great; she seemed more determined than ever to pull the trigger.

So, this was it – I was about to die, executed for the murder of my own sister

*

'Wait, wait!'

Flinging back the door to their hovel, someone rushed out into the square.

Someone who didn't want to miss seeing me killed after all.

The cry had distracted Kerrsly. She'd stepped back, taking the gun away from my head as she'd looked around.

'She's telling the truth!' the running figure yelled urgently.

Kerrsly grunted, annoyed by the unnecessary interruption,

She stepped back towards me. The gun's barrel rested against my head once more.

I clamped my eyes tight.

'On TV! There's a _copy_ of her!'

'I _saw_ her!' Kerrsly spat angrily.

The gun's barrel felt like it was being drilled into my skull. I felt it jerk slightly, Kerrsly struggling with her urge to kill me and the new information she was determined wouldn't penetrate her brain until it was too late.

The gun painfully swung to one side.

It cracked ridiculously loudly. The rain of small stones scattered by the bullet's striking of the ground stung my legs and side.

I opened my eyes.

Drad had pushed Kerrsly aside.

She had fired, intending to kill me.

Realising this, he expertly disarmed her with a quick twist of her arm.

'We have to see if this is true!' he declared firmly, staring the irate Kerrsly out. 'We need to see why Pila thinks there really is a copy of her!'

*

I was at an elaborate convention, arm in arm with Dorian.

'That doesn't mean anything; Kerrsly stormed. 'It's just old footage; old stuff we've seen so many times before!'

The screen globes they had in the shanty town weren't up to the standards I was used to in the Oasis. But these were the best pictures of me – of my _copy_ – I'd ever seen.

They just might save my life.

'No, no! This is happening now!' I said desperately. 'It's live! It's the Gaia Convention I was supposed to be attending tonight – well, right _now_ in fact!'

'Well of course she'd say tha–'

'Quiet Kerrsly!' Drad ordered authoritatively. 'Pila said it was live coverage.'

'So? They can edit in old footage to make it look like–'

'Kerrsly!'

Drad seemed relieved that he wasn't going to have to execute me after all.

'It doesn't seem possible – a copy.' Pila stared, entranced, at the screen.

'I'm here – she's there,' I pointed out unnecessarily.

I didn't want to throw away this opportunity to save my life.

'Kerrsly might be right,' Pila added unsurely. 'It could be old footage, altered to look like she's there. To fool us.'

She turned to glare suspiciously at me.

Drad pondered this, stroking his chin slowly with his hand.

He looked at me. Looked into my pleading, scared eyes.

'Let her go; I believe her,' he said finally.

*

Why had Dorian made a copy of me?

Why had he sent her to kill Cally?

Did he have spies amongst the rebels, who'd informed him that Cally was their leader?

Had I talked in my sleep?

Had my own copy been sent to rescue me?

If so, why did she call off the operation as soon as Cally had been killed?

How long had he been developing this copy anyway? Had he planned it as some sort of weird surprise, the same way he'd created a copy of himself?

So many questions cursed through my mind as I sped along the road in the ScoutBot.

As soon as I'd slipped the wristband back on, the ScoutBot had stopped behaving like a cornered animal.

It had waited patiently as I'd approached, obediently swinging open its door, turning its guns menacingly on anyone foolish to step too close or make anything that could be interpreted as a threatening move.

Drad had asked me if I wanted to stay with them. He'd pointed out that, with the loss of Cally, her organisation might begin to fall apart.

I could play her part, pretend I was her, so that no one need know she had been killed.

I'd laughed. The first time I was expected to leap between two hovels, or spin in mid-air and come up shooting, I'd be found out.

Besides, as he had just seen, even Cally's well-trained troops had no chance against the Tigerdroids.

The only way of ensuring the organisation survived was to weaken the effectiveness of the Tigerdroids.

I could help them do that, but only if I returned to the Oasis.

'Hah, so you reckon you can persuade Dorian to tame his Tigerdroids do you?' Drad had laughed good-naturedly. 'He's going to have a complete change of heart is he?

'You could say that,' I'd answered mysteriously. 'Because, you see, Dorian's made a mistake – he's made a copy of _himself_!'

*

# Chapter 26

As I approached the guards at the gate, I realised there might be a problem.

What would happen if one of them had only just come across my copy a few moments ago?

What, too, if _I_ came across her?

What if she was in our apartment when I returned?

How would I react to someone who wasn't just a perfect copy of me, but had also just killed my sister?

I should be nervous. My brain should be screaming at me that what I was attempting to do was crazy and could get me killed.

But I knew I could do this.

I knew because Cally, my twin sister, had done so much more with her life than I had with mine.

I knew too, ironically, because I had seen my own copy perform feats I would have said was physically beyond me.

Yes, I _could_ do this!

The guards waved me through with only the most cursory of checks.

'Evening Miss Havisham.'

'Saw you earlier on TV miss Havisham!' one said with a pleasant, admiring grin.

With any luck, I realised, my copy will have stayed on with Dorian for the drinks that would follow the Gaia Convention. Dorian didn't like missing out on any opportunity to work a well-connected crowd, opening up the prospects for new deals and contracts.

Maria was tidying up the foyer as I entered the apartment.

'Good evening Miss Havisham,' she said with a pleasant courtesy. 'Did you enjoy tonight's convention?'

'Yes, yes; bit tiring,' I replied nonchalantly, 'but no worse than expected.'

Good; if Maria didn't see anything unusual about me stepping through the front door, and if she was asking me how the convention had gone, that surely meant that my copy wasn't already somewhere inside the apartment.

With another pleasant smile, Maria turned back to her work.

I entered the main room.

Dean was there, sitting on the sofa, reading.

He smiled and rose as he saw me come in.

'Dean, I need to talk to you,' I said.

'I've missed you,' he said as we drew closer towards each other.

'No, I mean we _really_ need to talk an–'

His arms curled about me. He pulled himself close, tightly close, forcing me to arch my back as he leant forward to kiss me.

'Dean, please I–'

I wasn't expecting this. I turned my head to one side.

His kiss hit my cheek rather than my lips.

'We can't do this! Not now!'

His arms began to slacken, releasing me from his tight grip and allowing me to stand upright once more.

'Why?' he asked, sounding hurt. 'Why can't we do this?'

Why?

Because, once again, Dean had managed to leave me all confused.

This shouldn't be happening.

And – I didn't want it happening the way Dean had just tried to make it happen. Almost forcing himself on me. Simply expecting me to just fall into his arms like I was some nineteenth century southern belle.

It wasn't like Dean at all.

'And what do you mean; "Not now"?' he added suspiciously.

Wait; that hard, amused glint in his eyes!

Dorian!

He saw the sudden glint of recognition in my eyes.

He chuckled.

'I had you going there didn't I, eh Angeic? "Oh Dean, Dean" – priceless!'

'Dorian! I'm tired of all this trickery! And what's all this making a copy of _me_!'

'Ah, so you've seen her? Ah, of course; the televised convention. So, Angeic, please tell me; what am I supposed to do when I have an important convention to attend? One jam-packed with potential clients, family men who see a happy family as an important sign of stability – and my betrothed takes it into her head to go on some wild, dangerous jaunt out into the outside world?'

'Oh, and you just happened to have her to hand in your cupboard did you?'

'I'd been working on her as a surprise for you! You've already guessed, I think, the amazing potential for the copies I'm creating; why would I want to remain ageless, Angeic, while my lovely wife aged before me?'

He tenderly stroked my cheek, my chin, gazing deep into my eyes.

'But look; I'm answering all your questions. I should be asking you Angeic; what were you doing outside, when you know it's so dangerous?'

'How could I be in danger, Dorian, when I had one of your inventions to protect me?'

He stepped back.

'Ah yes, the ScoutBot; fabulous, isn't it?'

He didn't wait for a reply.

'Top secret, of course. Equipment like that doesn't go out unnoticed; even when it's logged out by "Dorian".'

Damn damn! Of course Dorian or his team would keep tabs on anything like that being logged out! And Dean's tracking chip! We'd negated mine, but forgotten all about making sure they couldn't track Dean's movements.

Anyone tracing him would have realised Dean had been down to the laboratories and then the gate. But he was still here, while the ScoutBot and I had disappeared. Dorian must have known almost immediately that I'd left the Oasis!

'Dean was just trying to help me, doing what I asked him to. I needed to get outside; I, well, I – needed time to think,'

Yes, I _really_ did need time to think! How could I explain why I'd left the Oasis?

'Time to think?' He looked at me sceptically.

'I...I guess I realised it's time to deal with this fear of suffering a death like my mum and dad. I've got to face up to that fear. Where better to do that than outside the Oasis – as long as, of course, I'm not in any real danger.'

He looked only slightly less sceptical.

'Sure, sure,' he said unsurely. 'But all this Dean passing himself off as me, Angeic; it's dangerous for everyone. It puts him in control of weaponry he doesn't really understand.'

Dean understands it right enough, I felt like saying. And he's going to help me take control of your Tigerdroids once I find him.

'It was just the once,' I said. 'He won't do it again.'

'Oh, that's right, he won't Angeic.'

The way he said it; it made me shiver deep down inside, like it was full of hidden menace.

'What...what do you mean by that?'

'Well, Angeic; let's just say your pretty little Dean has had a bit of a terrifying accident. He isn't going to be passing himself off as me anymore.'

*

# Chapter 27

Accident?

What did Dorian mean?

Surely Dorian hadn't deliberately done something hideous to himself just to damage Dean?

I couldn't find Dean anywhere I looked, even though I'd begun wandering into parts of the building I'd never bothered entering before.

If only I'd known how to trace him using his tracker chip code; that would make finding him ridiculously easy.

What idiots we'd been not to realise he could be tracked!

And the ScoutBot; wouldn't that have had a tracker chip too?

Dorian could have been tracking my every move after all!

Is that what lead the Tigerdroids to the rebel camp?

Am I responsible for Cally's death after all?

Still, it was fortunate that we had negated my own tracker chip. As far as Dorian was concerned, like him I had retired to my own section of the apartment.

Only dim night lights had been left on in the rooms I was exploring. It was now past midnight, and the only movement came from quietly whirring cleaner or maintenance Bots and Droids.

In all the time I'd lived in our apartment, I'd never descended into these rooms. I'd just regarded it all as part of Dorian's domain, an area of my life I didn't need to concern myself with.

Talking of concern, it was odd that Dorian had concerned himself with the weapons surrounding me in the room I'd just entered.

They were small scale, handheld arms. Sophisticated enough, but nowhere near the cutting edge technology Dorian developed and sold to the world. Even I could see that.

The lasers were at least fifteen years out of date. The armour would be useless against the weapons Dorian had developed ten years ago, let alone whatever he was working on now.

There were even crossbows, with explosive bolts, together with a number of the handheld versions favoured by Cal–

These were the _exact_ versions Cally had used.

When she had shown me how adept she was at using them, I'd admired not only her incredible expertise but also the relative sophistication of the weapons she and her rebels were using. Sure, it was outdated, but still expensive.

Those living in the Oases had always been told (to reassure all those who expected the outsiders to erupt in open revolt at any moment) that there were strict regulations on any arms trading.

Was Dorian supplying the rebels?

Did he have more concern for their plight than I'd ever realised?

If he was illegally supplying the rebels, I was surprised that I'd been able to enter this room so easily.

I would have expected that even my DNA profile wouldn't allow entry to such a contentious area.

Dorian wouldn't want me to know of any illegal weapons trading, even if it was for my own safety.

But of course.

The DNA access hadn't been set up for my benefit.

It had been set up to allow entrance to a trusted Tigerdroid officer.

A Tigerdroid officer sent out to kill the head of the rebels.

(Had Cally been threatening to reveal details about the illegal trading? Had she been quibbling about the price?)

The DNA access had been set up for my copy, not me!

*

'I think you must know you're not supposed to be here.'

I spun around to see who had spoken.

It was me.

I was standing there.

Telling me I wasn't supposed to be here.

Or rather, my copy was standing there. My perfect-in-every-detail copy.

If she hadn't been wearing a martial body suit, I would have sworn I'd spun around and caught my own image in a mirror.

It was a far weirder experience than when I'd first seen Cally. Although Cally was – _had_ been – my twin, there were a number of differences between us, most of them caused by the wildly different lives we'd led.

This girl though – this girl was me.

The eyes. The hair. The stance. The way she held her head.

Wow, did I really look that _haughty_?

The killer of my sister.

'And you? You're allowed access, I suppose?'

Damn! What a childish thing to say!

But I was shocked, seething, _ready to kill her_!

She had killed Cally! She had killed my sister!

But she was also weirdly, disturbingly, my _copy_. And something held me back from throwing myself at her.

'Obviously.' She answered my question nonchalantly. 'Which is how you also managed to get in here, of course. I suppose Dorian's going to have to place double checks on the locks. It's so tiresome, a pain. But he's had to suffer it himself, of course, to stop your friend Dean being a naughty little boy, hasn't he?'

'Dean? You know where he is?

'He's around. You sure you want to see him? He's a bit of a mess.'

She chuckled.

'You could do better, you know?' she added. 'You're quite a beauty, if I say so myself.'

If the smile she gave me was the smile I used to try and a charm people, I needed to work on it.

'You're nothing but a set of spares, you realise don't you?' I said to her cruelly.

Hey, I _wanted_ to hurt her, right?

'Spares?' She managed to sound confused. 'Oh, right; you mean like your precious Dean, yeah?'

I grabbed a knife from a nearby display. I held the blade up to my face.

'If you like to think you're beautiful, just remember I could destroy it all as quickly as Dorian destroyed Dean's beauty.'

Wow, did I just mention Dean's _beauty_?

My copy laughed gaily, tittering like we were out having fun at the fair.

'Oh, I think you're far too nice to do that. Besides, I don't think _you're_ brave enough to risk scarring your own beauty.'

'I've seen Dorian cut himself; seen it heal in moments.' I moved the blade down towards my arm, pulling up the sleeve to bare the flesh. 'Why should I be scared of cutting myself?'

She was looking at the blade, her eyes twinkling with amusement.

'Go on; dare you!' she said brightly.

I pushed the blade deep into the flesh of my upper arm

Gawd, that stung like crazy!

My legs almost gave way I was in such pain.

But I held firm, held her sparkling, laughing eyes. I didn't want her to know that this was hurting, if only for the briefest moment.

This incredible pain would be over soon. Then _she'd_ be the one wailing in agony.

To increase the effect, I dragged the blade across my arm.

The blood flowed, dark and red, down my arm and dripping to the floor.

My copy continued to grin. She pulled up the sleeve of her own arm, baring her own flesh.

She stared at the area of her arm where the cut should be appearing any moment now.

'Nope; doesn't seem to be working,' my copy nonchalantly declared.

'Angeic! Stop it! It won't work with her!'

Dean was suddenly alongside me, stemming the flow of blood by gripping the wound tightly with his hand.

I recognised his voice. His head was covered, hidden beneath the tightly drawn hood of the combat jacket he was wearing.

'De...Dean!'

I was shocked. Were his injuries so bad he had to hide his face beneath a hood?

'She said you were a mess. Are you–'

Dropping the knife, I tried to pull the hood back. He pulled away sharply. He turned to a nearby desk, searching it.

'We need a first aid pack,' he said from beneath his hood. ''Ah, this will do.'

He turned back, ripping the pack open and quickly drawing out a roll of Stemcell bandage.

My copy observed our little scene with amusement.

'Ah, beauty and the beast, eh?'

Dean swiftly applied the Stemcell. It wrapped tightly around my arm, instantly sealing the wound.

'Cutting yourself won't injure her,' Dean explained. 'Dorian altered the effect of the morphic fields when he created her.'

'In laygirl's language, dear, that means you can't injure me the way Dorian can hurt our poor, kind, but remarkably ugly beast here.'

'Shut it Diana!' Dean snapped, whirling on her.

'Touchy touchy! Show her Dean darling; show her how beauty has become the beast!'

'Diana?' I said, confused. 'Oh, of course; Anne, but with the DNA added again.'

I reached out for Dean's hood.

'Dean, it doesn't matter what you look like; I need to see.'

He pulled away again.

'No Angeic! You don't!'

'Oh go on; let her!' Diana turned to face me. 'Why do you think he's been exiled down here? It's not just because he was dabbling in things he shouldn't have been anywhere near. It's because no one could stand seeing his ugly face anymore.'

'Dean...please.'

I reached out tenderly towards his hood.

Resigned, he undid the cords and snaps holding it in place.

He flipped back the hood.

I gasped in horror.

*

# Chapter 28

It looked as if almost half his face had been shattered by some form of chemical accident or explosion.

The damage ran down his neck, disappearing into the areas beneath the jacket.

Did one whole half of his body look like this?

'How...how could Dorian do this to himself just to punish you?'

I tenderly stroked the other side of his face.

Dean laughed bitterly.

'I don't think anyone would do this to themselves on purpose. Even if you know you aren't going to suffer the consequences,' Dean said. 'It just seemed to happen suddenly, like he'd suffered some sort of horrendous accident in his laboratory. It almost knocked me off my feet – half my body just erupted from below. Maybe he dropped something; a flask of explosive liquid.'

He glanced over at Diana, as if he were pleading for confirmation of his assumption.

She smiled back at him as if it were no concern of hers.

From below? An explosion? Up one side of the body?

Hadn't I seen something like that only recent–

'Wait, Dean! When, when did this happen?'

'Happen?' He said it as if the timing wasn't relevant. 'Late this afternoon – well, yesterday afternoon, seeing as it's now past midnight.'

Late afternoon! That's when the attack took place.

When I saw Cally's shot strike the human officer.

From below.

And up one side of his body.

Dorian!

Dorian had taken part in the attack!

*

Oh Cally Cally Cally!

Little did you know you were injuring the man I love!

No, not Dorian!

Dorian would have deserved these injuries! He was trying to hunt my poor Cally down.

But it's my poor Dean who has suffered the–

Did I just say the man I love?

I grabbed him by the waist.

'Dean. I don't care how you look. We can leave, leave now!'

He shook his head. He gave that bitter laugh once more.

'I can't. Dorian's changed the DNA access on most of the locks.'

He pulled me closer, swung me around so my back was towards Diana.

'You've got to understand,' he said surprisingly resignedly, 'that you'll only ever be able to find me from now on through Dorian, got that?'

He'd given up. He felt beaten, destroyed.

One of his arms slipped away from my waist. His body moved, like he'd swung his arm behind his back and was searching for something on the table behind us.

'Dorian's the number one round here. I'm just his copy. You'll never find me if you don't consider that!'

'Ah, this is all so sweet,' Diana scoffed. 'But it's time for me to escort our little sleep walker back to her apartment.'

As she moved towards me, Dean swung me around once more.

He slipped something into my back pocket.

'I'm just the poor copy of the numero uno, Angeic!' he said sadly, giving me a final, parting kiss on my cheek.

*

# Chapter 29

Dean was obviously a broken man.

And who could blame him, after suffering such horrendous injuries?

And me? Wasn't I broken too?

I'd failed to neutralise the Tigerdroids as a fighting force.

Without Dean to help me, I wouldn't even know what to look for – some form of control codes, even a control panel perhaps, who knows? – let alone know how to reset it all so the Tigerdroids came under our control.

Besides, if Dorian was going to alter my DNA access codeing – as Diana implied he would, and as he'd already done for Dean – we wouldn't be able to go wandering around anywhere remotely secret anyway.

I showered and washed in my en-suite bathroom. I couldn't face seeing Dorian's smirking face staring back at me from the large mirror in the double bathroom we usually shared on a morning.

Maria had set the breakfast table for both of us however. I was tempted to insist she moved my placing to the window table in my section of the apartment, but as Maria briskly brought in the food itself I changed my mind, resolutely deciding that I would have to face Dorian at some point anyway, so it might as well be now.

The door to Dorian's side of the apartment opened.

Diana stepped out, half clothed in nothing but a towel loosely tied about her like a Grecian gown.

'Morning,' she said casually.

She gave me a triumphant smile as she made her way towards the large bathroom.

So, I thought; I suppose that means our copies have everything in place down there too.

*

Dorian sat down at the breakfast table.

We could both hear the splashing water of Diana's shower.

He nodded me a greeting.

'Pleasant evening?' he asked.

'Unusual, to say the least,' I answered coolly.

As he helped himself to the ham and eggs etcetera that Maria had set out on the warm platter, he indicated the bathroom with another nod of his head.

'Oh, I hear you've already been introduced.'

'Indeed. Will she be joining us for breakfast?'

He shook his head.

'She's got a great deal on today.'

'And in future, perhaps? Can we expect her to be around in future for breakfast?'

He twirled his fork in the air.

'Oh, perhaps, perhaps; I don't see why not, do you?'

'So our engagement – is that to be cancelled?'

'Engagement?' He had the grace to sound shocked. 'Why no no! As I said to you earlier, many of my clients expect the people they're dealing with to be happily married.'

'And this would count as a happy marriage would it? You inviting other girls to your bed?'

'Hardly _other_ girls Angeic!' He grinned, as if I had pointed out the craziness of my question.

'I'm sure we both know what I mean.'

'Of course, of course; we mean that you seemed to assume it was fine for you to cavort around with "Dean" but–'

'Cavort? Nothing took place between me and Dean, Dor–'

The bathroom door clicked open.

Diana entered the room, as proudly naked as the day she was born.

Which, of course, wasn't too long ago.

*

# Chapter 30

I went through the rest of the day in a daze.

'She's got everything I like about you,' Dorian had casually informed me as Diana had made her way to his bedroom to finish (or should that be _start_!) getting dressed. 'Although, of course, I also took the opportunity to remove some of your more irritating little habits and foibles.'

Had Dorian really developed his cloning to that incredible degree of detail?

I doubted it.

It was all just a way of getting a dig at me, like he was digging away with an excavator.

'Such as?' I said as I'd continued to coolly pick at the fruit on my plate.

'Well, all this new-found, warped morality you suddenly seem to be suffering from. You know, worried about the people on the outside.'

'Whereas Diana's a calculated killing machine, you mean?'

He'd raised his eyebrows.

'Ah, so you know it was her? The attack on the rebel base? You were impressed, I hope?'

Like me, he refused to lose his air of nonchalance.

'So there's _another_ way she's better than you,' he'd added cruelly. 'She's a feistier, much more _athletic_ version of you.'

At lunch, my friends noticed that I was a little distant.

'Ah, I know what it is,' Fullerana suddenly said with a mischievous glance at Gilleria. 'She's tired after last night.'

Gilleria patted my hand conspiratorially.

'Oh yes, come on now Angeic; even on TV, we couldn't fail to notice that gleam in Dorian's eyes every time he looked your way.'

'Yes, yes Angeic, so we don't just mean the Convention! We mean whatever went on _after_ the Convention!'

They both tittered and blushed, and looked at me both enviously and admiringly.

'I mean Angeic! That dress! Wow? What did Dorian have to do? Pour you into it.'

I grinned as best as I could.

They meant well.

They were trying to cheer me up.

But only succeeding in making me feel worse by the second!

'And Dorian looked so dashing and handsome and happy and pleased with himself! What had you two been up to before you set out? You looked the perfect, happy, beautiful couple!'

What had they been up to _before_ the convention?

Killing my sister.

That obviously made them both very happy.

Just how are you supposed to handle your fiancé having an affair with, well, not someone else, but _me_ – only _another_ me?

Another, _better_ me, according to Dorian.

And even according to Fullerana and Gilleria.

'Oh, oh, don't look now, but either someone's double just walked in or we've got trouble!'

Even though she'd told us not to look, Gilleria was staring hard over my shoulder towards the back of the room.

'No no, I don't think that could _possibly_ be a double Gilleria!' Fullerana declared adamantly as she followed Gilleria's gaze.

Surely she wouldn't–

I swung around in my chair.

Kerrsly!

It wasn't Diana – it was Kerrsly.

*

'What does she think she's doing back here?'

'Wasn't she fired? Isn't that what Mr Bodor had assured us?'

'She was so rude to me – and to you Angeic! You should say something to Mr Bodor!'

Kerrsly had caught me staring at her.

She could hardly miss me, seeing as how I'd spun around in my chair.

She'd ducked back into the kitchen where she'd appeared from.

How had she got her job back?

Did she still blame me for Cally's death?

Did she still want to kill me?

Perhaps Mr Bodor had had a change of heart and rehired her. Perhaps Kerrsly had explained the dire straits her sacking had left her family in.

I turned back to face the table.

'I don't mind,' I said honestly. 'It was too steep a price to pay for what she did.'

'Angeic! She was rude! People from outside aren't supposed to be rude!'

'They should be grateful that they have a job!'

I smiled lamely at my friends. I couldn't begin to explain to them what it was really like outside the Oases.

'Look,' I said, 'if it makes you feel better, I'll go over to her later and make sure she's learned her lesson, okay?'

Their eyes widened in surprise. Then they nodded in agreement.

Good.

That meant I could approach Kerrsly after lunch without anyone wondering what I was doing. Kerrsly being here was a heaven sent opportunity to get a warning back to Drad that I'd failed.

And I couldn't see how I'd _ever_ have the chance to neutralise the Tigerdroids without Dean's help.

Of course, as soon as Diana had left me last night after escorting me back to my side of the apartment (hah, I didn't know then that afterwards she was just going to simply stroll across to Dorian's rooms!) I'd searched my back pocket to see what Dean had left there.

It was a tracking device, an outmoded yet still workable one he'd taken from a pile of the arms stacked on the table behind him.

It was a brilliant idea, slipping it into my pocket while Diana was unsighted by our positions.

Only he hadn't had chance to give me the codes had he?

That, of course, would really have alerted Diana's attention!

But without the codes, I couldn't use the tracking device.

And without a usable tracking device, I couldn't find Dean.

And without Dean – well, without Dean, I couldn't do anything, could I?

*

'Kerrsly,' I said quietly enough to ensure we wouldn't be overheard, but not so quietly that it would seem odd to anyone nearby, 'I didn't–'

'Everything is to your satisfaction I hope, Miss Havisham?'

Mr Bodor was suddenly alongside us, beaming like he was my favourite puppy dog.

I'd left Fullerana and Gilleria at the table, tidying everything away into their handbags while I'd approached Kerrsly. I was hoping to catch her just as she left the table she was serving, and before she headed off for the kitchen once more.

Unfortunately, the ever-attentive Mr Bodor had been following my every move, and had swooped towards us even as I'd begun to open my mouth.

'As you see,' he said, directing his wide smile at a cringing Kerrsly, 'Kerrsly here has being reemployed, as you expressly requested!'

As I requested?

No, as _Diana_ had requested.

But why would Diana insist on Kerrsly having her job back?

I hid my confusion with a smile as wide as Mr Bodor's.

'Yes, yes, Mr Bodor; as I said, I'm sure she meant no harm!'

Now how would I know Diana would have said that as part of her reasoning for offering Kerrsly her job back?

Well, she was _me_ , wasn't she?

And even if I were wrong, and Diana had said nothing of the sort, Mr Bodor would probably find it extremely difficult to exactly recall what Diana had said. And even if he did, he would be far too polite to correct or even think ill of me for being mistaken.

'That's _very_ gracious of you Miss Havisham, in light of the girl's unfortunate and undoubted rudeness on the day.'

Although his smile never faltered, he still somehow managed to give Kerrsly a sidelong frown,

'Kerrsly, you should thank Miss Havisham!'

'Oh yes, yes, thank you ma'am,' Kerrsly said half mockingly, half seriously.

She'd judged it just right. Mr Bodor seemed unsure whether he would be giving her another telling off or granting me a parting smile after successfully persuading her to thank me.

'Now that's enough lingering Kerrsly; back to work. Miss Havisham's got much better things to do than hang around talking to you, I'm sure!'

*

I hadn't managed to pass on my warning to Drad through Kerrsly, as I'd originally hoped.

As I'd just found out that it was Diana who had insisted she was rehired, however, perhaps it was for the best that I hadn't tried to use Kerrsly as messenger after all.

What was the connection between them?

It didn't make _any_ sense.

Kerrsly had been literally murderously furious when she believed I was Cally's killer.

Now here she was accepting a job through Diana, Cally's real murderer.

And I was still left with the urgent problem of somehow letting Drad know that the Tigerdroids were still as powerful and dangerous as ever.

By the time I had made my way back to my apartment, I was still dreading opening the door and finding that both Dorian and Diana were already there. But I had also reached such a point of complete exhaustion and disillusionment that a large part of me no longer cared.

All I wanted was to throw myself beneath a hot, fiercely stinging, cleansing shower.

To dress myself in something sharply clean, light and untroublesome.

Even so, I didn't linger in the shared part of our apartment; I rushed through it towards my own section, not wanting to run the slightest risk of bumping into numero uno and his copy.

Wait.

That's what Dean had said, more or less.

He'd said he was numero uno's copy. As he'd handed me the tracking device.

I rushed over to the drawer where I'd hidden the tracker beneath my lingerie.

I pulled it out, quickly examined it, working out where and how you inserted the code you were wanting to track.

Numero uno. That's 1.

And his copy – A.

1A.

As I clicked the code into the tracker, a map appeared on the small, quasi 3d screen.

A map with our very own building towards its very centre.

And there, as a flashing red dot lying a few floors below me, was Dean.

*

I either heard or sensed a movement behind me.

I whirled around.

She'd already managed to draw incredibly close to me.

'Angeic,' she said.

'Kerrsly,' I replied nervously. 'How...how did you get in here?'

*

# Chapter 31

By way of an answer to my question, 'How did you get in here?', Kerrsly smirked, producing and holding up what looked like a lipstick.

She twirled its base.

Instead of lipstick, a small, bloodied little finger rose up from its holder.

I shook my head, both in horror and disbelief.

'Ah ah; DNA locks aren't fooled that easily. They detect decay.'

'Not when it's encased in a miniature freezer developed by your husband to be.'

'Dorian? Why's he helping you? Don't you realise he's responsible for Cally's death?'

She nodded grimly as she slipped the 'lipstick' back into her pocket.

'Of course I know! And I also know that you've failed; you didn't manage to neutralise the Tigerdroids, did you?'

'All I've got to do is scream Kerrsly and–'

'Scream?' she laughed bitterly. 'Is that what you think Cally would've done if she thought she was in danger? Scream? And you call yourself her twin?'

She was right. Cally wouldn't scream for help; she'd _respond_ to a scream for help!

'Luckily for you, I'm not here to hurt you; I'm here to _warn_ you. I reckon Dorian's put two and two together and worked out you've gone native with the rebels and are trying to sabotage the Oasis' defences.'

'He caught me wandering around in areas I shouldn't have been in. But...how do you know all this?'

'Because _she_ came to me, didn't she? Cally's murderer. Pretending to be you, of course. Telling me that you'd – _she'd_ – supposedly managed to negate all the defences. And that I should tell the rebels. If _she's_ telling me that, that means all the defences are still working; and they're wanting Drad to fall into a trap.'

'How did you know it wasn't me, that it was Dia – my copy?'

'Hah! You, you still remember how close I came to killing you. So you're wary, a little bit frightened, when you talk to me. Even when you approached me in the restaurant earlier. Her, goddamn her, she's as confident as anyone comes. Plus, I felt like strangling her right there and then. Oh yes, I knew it was her right enough.'

_'She_ was the one who got you your job back,' I said, still suspicious.

'It was part of the deal.' She hung her head, ashamed.

'Deal?' I was more suspicious, more wary, than ever.

'I...I needed my job back; my family were starving, homeless. And...and I didn't know you were Cally's sister. I just couldn't understand how close you two were. So suddenly close! I just wanted you out of the way again! They were just supposed to _rescue_ you! I didn't think Cally would be killed!'

'Kerrsly! You betrayed us? You betrayed Cally?'

'I just thought they'd rescue you! I didn't think Cally would be killed!'

'You saw what happened last time the Tigerdroids rescued me! How could you think no one would be killed?'

'I thought we'd all just run away, leaving you to be rescued! I thought we'd all run because we'd seen the damage the Tigerdroids had done last time!'

'Cally was my sister! She'd fight to the death to save me!'

'I didn't _know_ she _was_ your sister then, did I?'

She hung her head ashamedly once more.

'Kerrsly, if it helps – you're not entirely to blame for Cally's death. They were tracking me; there was a tracker in the ScoutBot, that machine I arrived in.'

She shook her head.

'No, ScoutBots don't have trackers; they're protectors, remember? That's why he approached me, promising me my job back, promising you'd just be safely whisked away.'

'He?'

I was increasingly surprised by Kerrsly's knowledge of Dorian's weaponry.

'We know him as Barrel; the gunrunner who keeps us supplied with weapons. We didn't know he worked for Dorian, of course. He told us he got all his equipment through smuggling. I must've been muttering a few snide things about you around him, because he sensed I'd like you out of the way. Cally never trusted him fully, see, which is why she let me deal with him. So he didn't know where she was, or you. But he did know that you were outside the Oasis, because the guards on the gate always let Dorian know what's going on.'

'Then – wait! Kerrsly, anyone from outside who isn't an evening worker is supposed to have left the Oasis by now. They'll know you haven't left!'

She smiled.

'I've already left, as far as the gate's guards are concerned. See, once I confessed to Drad what I'd done, so I could warn him that Barrel was working for Dorian, we managed to persuade Barrel to tell us about the secret tunnel. A tunnel he used to get weapons out of here to the outside world.'

'Persuade?' I repeated doubtfully.

She raised the gruesome finger once again.

'Whose DNA do you think I've been using to get around?'

*

'He even had access to _my_ rooms?'

I was appalled. I was almost glad that we were now using his finger to once again gain access to the areas Dorian restricted me from entering.

'He was Dorian's spy, rather than a gunrunner,' Kerrsly explained. 'Supplying us with weapons was probably just Dorian's way of ensuring we always posed a threat to the Oases.'

'Ensuring increased sales of his more sophisticated weaponry to the Oases themselves, right?'

'Right!'

We were moving through the dim rooms quite swiftly, following the course the tracker was leading us on.

A course leading us to Dean!

I might not have failed in my mission after all.

*

We were entering the building's lower rooms, rooms I'd always taken to be the Droid factory's main working areas and therefore of no interest to me.

I'd naturally stayed away from them, whether they were restricted to me or not.

There were laboratories and test labs here, vats and glass cases containing various degrees of intermingled biological matter and machinery.

There were half-formed Animadroids and Animabots, or experimental limbs and internal organs, all kept alive, even jerkily moving, by languidly blinking computers.

Disconcerting eyes watched our steady movement through the displays, mouths moved as if about to cry out an alarm.

Worst of all were the areas where outmoded Animadroids had been sent back for recycling, their usable parts collected in large, transparent freezers, the parts deemed useless strewn casually across motionless conveyor belts and silent machine feeders.

But at least we were nearing the red blip that was Dean.

We entered a larger, much less cluttered laboratory than all the others.

The glass cells here didn't contain sections of animals.

They contained human parts.

Human lungs, breathing.

Human stomachs, gurgling quietly.

Hearts beating (not as fast as mine).

Fingers grasping.

Elbows flexing.

Eyes winking.

And Dean!

Dean was in the very centre of the displays, a lazy smile on his face as he noticed my surprise at seeing him

His dreadful injuries had been miraculously treated, his face entirely whole and beautiful again.

I ran towards him.

'Dean! You're cur–'

I skidded to a horrified halt.

He was suspended on cables and tubes descending from the ceiling.

His lower half had gone. A mix of neatly curled and collected bio machinery and human material hung down from his torn torso

'Dean? What has Dor–'

His head, his eyes, followed me, observing my confused shock.

He smiled, tried to talk, but nothing came out.

'Terrifying, isn't it?' he somehow managed to finally, faintly say, even though the mouth's movement didn't match the words.

'Angeic...'

Kerrsly was alongside me. She nodded off towards the area beyond Dean's hanging torso.

I realised I'd been frozen to the spot. I pulled my eyes away from the hanging Dean.

Someone was drawing closer.

It was Dean.

The _real_ Dean.

*

# Chapter 32

'Dorian's earlier experiments,' Dean said, indicating the terrifying half or even quarter formed copies surrounding us. 'Best that could be said of them is that they all suffer from various degrees of success or failure.'

A butcher's yard, a human slaughter house, couldn't have been any more chilling than what we were seeing here. Many of the parts here were still being kept artificially alive, moving, bubbling, blinking.

And, ostensibly, they were all parts of the same person.

Dorian.

There were multiple, partially or horrendously deformed examples of his face.

There were numerous versions of his hands, some painfully clenched like crab's claws.

Legs and arms came in different sizes.

'I came across this as I explored my relatively extensive prison,' Dean explained. 'No doubt Dorian enjoyed the thought of the horror I'd feel when I came across my predecessors; it's a very clever way of reminding me how humble my beginnings really were. Formed from little more than butcher's wastes and offcuts.'

He stopped by a transparent cell, from out of which various eyes stared and mouths gawped.

'They suffered so I could be born.'

'Ah, but you should see Angeic's own little collection.'

Diana silently stepped from behind a more solid line of high cabinets.

'Would you like to see that Angeic? Your very _own_ predecessors?'

Before I could answer, Kerrsly had rushed past me, flinging herself in a flurry of whirling clothes at Diana.

'Diana!'

Kerrsly was no problem for the lithe Diana.

Diana twisted, spun out of the way, bringing her hands down hard across Kerrsly's back. Utilising the girl's own momentum, Diana sent Kerrsly plummeting onwards and ungainly struggling to stay on her feet.

Before either Dean or I had time to react, Diana brought a leg up high as part of her same spinning movement, brutally striking Kerrsly across her midriff.

Kerrsly was sent sprawling across the floor.

With a skip, hop, and jerking kick to the head, Diana knocked Kerrsly unconscious.

It was all over before I could even scream.

And Kerrsly was one of Cally's well-trained rebels.

What chance did I have against Diana?

*

Kerrsly's forehead was cut far worse that I'd thought possible.

Blood poured from it no matter how much I tried to stem its flow with my swiftly soaked handkerchief.

Diana tut-tutted mockingly.

'Such a shame; she's been very useful to us, of course.'

'She realised her mistake in trusting you.'

'Really? But I'm here, aren't I, catching you once again in a place you aren't supposed to be? How would I know you were here, if Kerrsly wasn't helping us?'

I gently pulled Kerrsly's sleeve back, feeling the bared flesh of her upper arm.

There! A small disc just beneath the skin.

'Tracker! You were tracking her!'

Diana grinned merrily.

'Oh, didn't you know? Anyone from outside with an Oasis job is implanted with a tracker while they're put to sleep for their health checks. Double security, see?'

'That's hardly betraying us.'

Kerrsly seemed weaker than ever.

I hoped Dean would return quickly with the first aid pack he'd gone for. ('Oh, don't bother looking in the weapons room,' Diana had sneered. 'You're not allowed anywhere like that anymore of course.')

'No? True, she didn't know of the tracker, but she certainly knew she was leading you to where we wanted you; somewhere where we could be sure you weren't up to something that might jeopardise everything.'

'Why would she help you? You killed Cally, the girl she loved.'

'Well yes, _loved_ – in the past tense! Young girls are so fickle, don't you think? Besides, what do you think she'd do if her beloved was effectively resurrected in an almost perfectly _identical_ yet more beautiful and exciting form?'

I looked down sadly at the dying – yes, I believed she was dying now – Kerrsly.

Did she really love me?

I couldn't believe a word Diana was saying.

'This was all I could find,' Dean said as he stepped into the room holding up a first aid box he'd obviously had to rip off a wall.

'Tut tut; damaging company property!' Diana grinned happily at her own witticism.

'I don't think any first aid box could help her Dean.'

Kerrsly was growing colder by the second. Her skin was greying.

'Oh, that really is so unfair,' Dorian said, entering the room from the other side of the room and deftly throwing a screen globe into the area between us. 'She won't be able to see the massacre of your sister's rebels, Angeic!'

Hovering in the space between us, the screen globe instantaneously began to project its huge sphere of moving images.

Drad and the rebels were already confidently making their way down the tunnel.

*

# Chapter 33

Why was Drad attacking?

Kerrsly hadn't passed on the false information that I'd neutralised the Tigerdroids.

Dorian bent down opposite me, leaning over Kerrsly's body and quickly, callously searching her pockets.

Dean eyed him warily, like he was wondering if he should launch himself at him, wondering if he could do anything worthwhile before Diana leapt in.

'No guard Dorian?' he said, glancing about him.

Dorian chuckled as he found what he was looking for; the lipstick holder containing the finger.

'Ah, far too expensive to leave lying around!' As he rose to his feet, he looked down on Dean. 'Guards? Diana is a match for a whole group of guards; I don't think there's any need for any further protection, do you?'

I nodded at the finger Dorian was slipping into his own pocket.

'Isn't that proof, Dorian, that Drad knows what you're up to? That's your gunrunner's finger, in case you're wondering.'

'Oh, Angeic; sometimes we have to make sacrifices for the greater good. We had to let the rebels find out about the tunnel without raising any suspicions. Poor Barrel; he was our most secret weapon, and he didn't even realise it. We have other people in place; they can continue to ensure these people only know what we want them to know.'

On the screen, the scene had switched to a new view, a new hidden camera.

Drad and his team were almost casually walking down the tunnel, suspecting no problems, no treachery. Even when a corridor ahead of them was closed and they had to carry on down an offshoot, there was no hesitation in taking it.

'Why, Dorian? Why are you leading your own creation into a trap?'

Dorian looked over towards Diana, giving her a beaming smile.

'Ah, see what a bright girl you are?'

'Not so bright,' Diana scoffed. 'It's old-movie plot cliché; wicked weapons manufacturer breeds and nurtures the enemy to increase sales.'

'Just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.' Dorian grinned.

The rebels had reached the end of the tunnel. Even the dim evening light made them blink after the relative darkness of the tunnel. They began to silently lope across the squares and gardens, taking up position behind statues and fountains.

The camera's point of view switched again, this time to outside cameras I would never have known existed.

The tunnel door shut behind the last of the rebels, becoming just one more statue's plinth.

'But why a _massacre_?' Dean asked. 'Why wipe out the threat you've created?'

'Wipe out?' He glanced over towards Diana as if she were his secretary taking notes. 'I don't think we have any _reliable_ figures on how many rebels are out there, do we? There could be _thousands_ more – all capable, as we've seen tonight, of invading any Oasis!'

The police had detected the mini invasion taking place in the midst of their city. The first teams had already swiftly moved in to attempt a containment. The first shots were being fired, the cracks echoing around the buildings.

The rebels were better trained, had more to fight for, more to lose; they fought tenaciously, bravely.

'And when your precious, vicious Tigerdroids save the day,' I said, 'every Oasis will suddenly realise they just have to have a troop of their own!'

'As you so presciently observed, Angeic, no one would risk purchasing such potentially violent troops otherwise! You see, you've been a great help to me; how else would I have persuaded the rebels it was safe to attack the Oasis itself unless they believed they had someone like you working on the inside for them?'

'We were so fortunate that our attack on the rebels didn't go to plan,' Diana added coolly.

'Didn't go to plan?' I snapped. 'You mean you underestimated Cally, who came pretty damn close to killing you two murderers!'

'Ah yes; poor, unfortunate Cally,' Dorian said. 'The wrong girl, in the wrong place, at the wrong time. Poor Diana was so sure she'd succeeded of course; we never even knew Cally was your identical twin until you surprisingly turned up in the evening.'

'Then...you didn't intend to kill Cally?'

Dorian shook his head.

'She was every bit as useful to us as our poor, over-confident Drad is. No, no – the target was _you_ darling.'

'Me? But I wasn't even helping the rebels at that point!'

'Which is why, at that point, we mistakenly thought you were redundant to our purposes. As you can see, I now have a fiancée with all your more desirable qualities but none of your useless ones.'

He gave Diana an admiring, even a profoundly loving glance.

'What use is a wife with newly found morals to a wicked weapons manufacturer, eh?' he continued casually. 'Or, for that matter, a supposedly friendly, helpful copy who continues to betray him?'

He leaned down and stretched out an arm towards Dean's head, like he was going to fondly caress his tortured face.

There was something metallic wrapped around his wrist. A charge of energy leapt from it.

Dean's face contorted in agony as the charge surged into his forehead.

He slumped lifelessly to the floor.

*

# Chapter 34

Stepping through the projected images of the battle taking part in the city, Dorian contemptuously ignored me as I wept over Dean's dead body.

'Of course, Diana,' he said as he strode through the door without looking back, 'you can take as long as you wish taking care of your own imperfect copy.'

Diana didn't even waste any time giving me a malicious grin.

She just launched herself at me like she'd been waiting for this moment for a long time.

She picked me up as part of her forward movement as if I'd abruptly become weightless.

I was sent crashing into the side of one of the tall glass cabinets. The hanging limbs quivered and shuck like some macabre, ecstatically clapping audience.

I looked about me urgently, trying to find anything I could use as a weapon. But the room was full of displays and glass compartments. The only thing I could possibly use would be a shard of shattered glass, and I'd probably slice my hand to a useless mass of pulp if I tried that.

I'd taken too long looking around.

Diana was on me again, brutally casting me aside so that I stumbled, fighting for my feet as I careered uncontrollably through the sphere of projected images.

I stopped myself from falling only by grabbing the hanging torso.

Dean's copy blinked, mouthed a silent protest.

As Diana moved towards me once more, I swung around to the other side of the torso, keeping a grip on the body, keeping it between us.

When Diana threatened to come at me from the right, I blocked her move with the torso.

When she feinted a move to the left, but tried to swing in from the right once more, I was ready for her, blocking her line of attack.

Suddenly, she ducked beneath the swinging body, coming back up at me hard.

I was lifted off my feet, sent spinning through the air.

I crashed through the glass front of a cabinet, shattering the displays inside.

It was like landing in a haunted graveyard, the electronically animated arms and hands grasping at me as they fell across my body. A hundred Dorian's trying to rive me apart.

I was cut badly. There were huge, gaping wounds in my legs and across my chest. God only knows what other injuries I'd suffered that I couldn't see.

Diana was calmly making her way towards me once more, a gleam in her eye that said it was time to finish me off.

The torso was wildly swinging from side to side behind her, Dean smiling, winking.

*

Winking.

Dean was winking at me.

Just by my head, there was a huge, broken jar of preserved eyes. Preserved like pickles, pickles that watched you.

I snatched up the jar. I threw the contents into the approaching Diana's face.

She was splattered in soft, gelatinous eyes. But, more importantly, the formaldehyde or whatever it was the eyes had been preserved in stung Diana's own eyes, briefly blinding her.

I glanced about me. I needed another weapon.

I quickly began to pull out the sharp, stiletto-like electrodes that, pressed into the arms, administered the charges that caused their muscles to jerk and move.

I jumped out of the cabinet, trailing the electric leads behind me.

I plunged the first stiletto hard into Diana's arm, the needle sharp point effortlessly sinking through her tight clothes and the flesh beneath.

Her arm, surging with current, began to jerk uncontrollably.

I plunged home another lead and another, each one making her jerk and move ever more uncontrollably.

I turned back to the cabinet, looking for the current controls. Finding them, I increased the current.

Diana's moves became even wilder, more violent.

Just in case, I ran home a few more electrodes, covering her in coiling cables.

She looked like one of the automated displays, one that had spun wildly out of control.

I stepped back to rest against what was left of the cabinet.

Diana's face was creased in a mix of terror and agony.

I didn't quite know if I were being ridiculously foolish, but I turned down the current enough to let her fall, exhausted, against another nearby cabinet.

She sat there, jerking only slightly now and again, now looking more like some pathetic puppet than the incredible fighting machine she had been only a moment ago.

The orb of projected images showed that the Tigerdroids were preparing to move in.

I needed to at least find some way of opening the tunnel doors so that what was left of Drad's force could escape.

I caught a slight movement in the corner of my eye.

Movement in the bodies lying across the floor.

'Dean?' I said hopefully.

It wasn't Dean. Somehow, Kerrsly had found a last reserve of energy to peer up at me through blood-soaked eyes.

She was raising a bolt gun in her hand, struggling to aim it.

'There's no need Ker–'

The gun went off with a sharp snap.

The bolt whisked through the air.

It struck home.

Right in the middle of my chest.

*

# Chapter 35

I stared down in disbelief at the bolt that had deeply penetrated my chest.

'Ker...Kerrsly!' I agonisingly groaned. 'It...it's me...'

She wasn't listening. She was perfectly still, silent.

She'd died without knowing that she'd killed me rather than Diana, as she'd intended.

'Told you.' Diana stared up at me with amusement.

Somehow, she was beginning to regain control of her body.

She wasn't jerking around like she had been. She was still obviously exhausted, but she had even managed to grasp and pull out one of the electrodes.

'Told me what?'

I wasn't in the mood for her games anymore.

I was dying, I was sure of that.

I could feel myself fading, my thoughts chaotically ebbing.

'Told you she loved me!'

'You?' I laughed tiredly. 'I thought you said it was me she loved?'

Diana chortled roguishly as she pulled out yet another electrode

'You? Oh, that's priceless, priceless!'

She contemptuously glared at me.

'You're not fit to call yourself a twin of Cally! Courageous, resourceful, athletic! _I'm_ the one who's inherited Cally's better qualities!'

'Diana, Kerrsly tried to _kill_ you when she first saw you tonight!'

Diana was almost fully back in control of her body once more, although she still appeared dazed and tired.

'You mean when she rushed towards me crying out "Diana!"? She was _so_ glad to see me, fool. She thought I was at last about to return her love, as I'd hinted I would. But her usefulness was over as soon she brought you here, where you can so easily be disposed of.'

With a slight nod of her head, she indicated the mass of body parts strung around us. With another nod, she looked towards the bolt imbedded in my chest.

'By the way, if I'm not mistaken that's a Heart Render bolt.'

I looked down at the protruding bolt.

'Heart Render?'

'It has a mildly explosive tip.

I urgently, agonisingly tried to pull the bolt out. But it was firmly lodged.

'Bye!' Diana whispered as she happily slipped into a sleep.

The tip exploded.

And my chest opened up in a bloody mass.

*

# Chapter 36

*

# Chapter 37

*

# Chapter 38

I woke up on a small but comfortable mattress, covered in light cotton sheets.

My chest!

It had exploded!

Urgently, I lifted up the sheets.

My chest looked surprisingly normal, but I had to be sure.

I felt around with my hands, feeling everywhere.

Everything was as it should be.

Even the deep cuts to my arms and legs that I'd suffered when Diana had thrown me through the glass had somehow magically healed.

It wasn't possible.

Had it all been a dream?

'I saw you were awake.'

Dorian came over to my bed, leaning over me with a concerned yet happy smile.

'How're you feeling?'

He kissed me warmly, tenderly on the cheek.

His eyes sparkled with love and kindness.

'De...Dean? Is that you?'

*

# Chapter 39

He laughed.

'Well, that at least answers the question I was going to ask you.'

'Question?'

'I was going to ask if that's really you, Angeic.'

_'Really_ me?' How much more confusing could all this get. 'Of course it's me. Who else would it be?'

He didn't bother answering.

He just stood aside, directing my attention to the other bed lying alongside me.

I lay in that bed too.

But the body was uncovered, naked.

And it had a huge, gaping hole in its chest.

*

# Chapter 40

The huge wedding table was piled high with presents from presidents, mayors and the world's richest industrialists.

Unopened, brightly wrapped boxes had had to be set across the floor.

Fullerana and Gilleria threaded amongst the forest of gifts, excitedly wondering out loud what they could possibly be.

'Miss Havisham, Miss Havisham!' A smartly dressed page called out to me from the doorway. 'The announcement is about to be made!'

Picking up the flowing white skirts of my wedding dress, I swirled out of the room, followed by a curiously giggling Fullerana and Gilleria.

Of course, I would have wanted Pila and the others to be here to enjoy and witness all this.

But it was all too soon for that just yet.

We couldn't reach out a hand of friendship to those on the outside so quickly without causing resentment and fear so soon after the attack on the Oasis.

We could at least be grateful, however, that most of the rebels had survived, escaping down the tunnel once it had been opened.

There had been losses, of course, including Drad. But it would have been far far worse if it hadn't been for the command from on high that the Tigerdroids should be stood down, rather than committed to the attack.

And we had my handsome, immaculately dressed groom to thank for all that.

He was standing almost in the very centre of the room as I entered it. He was surrounded by a gaggle of men proudly introducing their own wives, shaking his hand and assuring him that – now he'd 'proved himself a stable family man' – further contracts would be signed.

Even so, as if he had somehow sensed my entrance, he turned to smile warmly, lovingly, at me.

'Ah, here she is!' he said deeply. 'My beautiful bride, my wonderful wife!'

There were claps, cheers, a few whistles.

I grinned as they parted to allow me through.

It was so hard to believe that only a few weeks ago, I had been lying upon a laboratory floor, a massive hole where my chest should be.

Hard to believe, too, that the beautiful man taking my hand with a beaming, welcoming smile had also been dead.

But, thankfully, Dorian had made a mistake.

He had used his untested wrist energy-discharger to kill Dean.

Oh yes, Dean had died, died in the instant the energy charge flowed into him.

Had Dean been an ordinary man, that would have been it; he would have died, and would still be dead.

But the very thing that Dorian had always feared most about his copy – that utilising morphic fields in his development might create an _unwanted_ connection – had been set in motion the instant Dean had died.

Dean, of course, had suffered the consequences of everything Dorian had inflicted on himself. So once Dean was no more, every injury had to be returned to its true source.

Dorian had only just stepped out of the laboratory door when half his body had abruptly – yet eerily silently – exploded.

His heart couldn't take the shock.

And as his life slowly flowed from him, where else should it flow but along those connections, restoring to life and beauty he who was completely blameless?

'An announcement! An important announcement!' Dean cried above the buzz of the crowd, lifting his arm and mine high to grab everyone's attention.

'You're getting married,' some wag yelled out, to be rewarded with a polite smattering of laughter.

Only the board members of Nairod Inc scowled.

They had had this forced upon them.

But if Dorian insisted on it, they had no choice but to go along with it. No matter how much they disagreed.

Who could believe that the man standing before them wasn't really Dorian?

Certainly not a dazed, exhausted Diana, when he had helped her to untangle the entwining cables and help her to her feet.

'We have to work quickly,' he had said to her, 'while Angeic's brain is still alive. I can connect you up, and all the knowledge she's learned about the rebels since your own creation can become yours!'

Amazingly, he was being perfectly honest with her.

Everything I knew flooded into her perfectly uninjured body.

Everything.

Until, of course, Diana was no longer Diana.

She was me.

*

Dean no longer had to shout now that the crowd was hushed and attentive.

'Well yes, Angeic is now my amazingly brave, resourceful wife.'

There was a ripple of laughter. They'd assumed Dean was making a joke.

My face glowed with a fitting blush.

'But she is also,' Dean continued proudly, 'Nairod Inc's newest, youngest board member!'

The crowd cheered, they raised their glasses, they toasted my health, they wished us both happiness and success.

I gripped Dean's hand hard.

It was going to be a difficult time.

But we would be happy.

And we _would_ succeed.

*

Thankfully, Dean has never told me how he managed to dispose of the bodies.

But I've heard the strangest rumours.

In a laboratory deep below here, it's said, half a torso hangs from the ceiling.

It twitches.

It grimaces.

And it mouths what could only be silent cries for help.

It's hard to tell, though – because half its face has been badly deformed, as if by an horrendous explosion...

End

If you enjoyed reading this book, please remember to click that you liked it on the Kindle Rating icon.

You may also enjoy (or you may know someone else who might enjoy) these other books by Jon Jacks.

The Caught

The Rules

Chapter One

The Changes

Sleeping Ugly

The Barking Detective Agency

The Healing

The Lost Fairy Tale

A Horse for a Kingdom

Charity

The Most Beautiful Things

The Last Train

The Dream Swallowers

Coming soon:

Wyrd Girl

