by Jon Jacks
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.
&n
bsp; 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.