The only reason she didn't bust into a what-the-fuck does that mean was that they were still in enemy territory. Somehow she managed to stomp on her shock and keep moving, backwards in a crouch so that she could watch their rear until she caught up with him. There was a shadow just entering the tunnel; she aimed, shot a three-round burst, and then moved past Tomas into the bottleneck. Loki, maybe. It had been too masculine a shape to be Desdemona.

"She'll have traps for us," he whispered as she passed. "Probably broke the rule about staying in one place until the horn sounded. So did Loki, I'm betting." When she settled in at a sharp bend at the tunnel near its end he followed after her, glancing once and twice over his shoulder despite her watch.

"Probably. We'll just have to be better than they are." Now who was arrogant? She tilted her head, listening for anyone at the end of the tunnel, trying to draw a map in her head of what they'd seen before they established their hidey-hole. Her memory obligingly threw up an image that gave them no help at all. The tunnel teed past the turn and opened up on either side into a blossom of cul-de-sacs, with narrow openings exiting from the northernmost alcoves: they looked like flowers from the air.
Dammit. They'd have to clear each of the cul-de-sacs before they could start on the others. And keep a constant watch from four or five directions at once. "Going left." She moved at a low crouch into the left tee, cleared the entrance to the first cul-de-sac, and held ready for Tomas to move up.

Tomas reached her and slid into the next cul-de-sac. As he did, a twelve-year-old version of him slid out of the next one over. The boy had a gun in either hand, and he was pointing them at her.

Jackie: Okay, so I really hadn?t understood what Tomas meant by seeing ?me?. Not until this kid showed up, and it was Tomas. It was a Tomas I hadn?t seen for fourteen years, and he was pointing guns at me. Fucking little gods, that freaked me right the fuck out.

She shot, crack-crack-crack, before she could react consciously, but when she did it was with a startled, "What??!" After the boy dropped, she spun quickly to watch behind them, then back to keep an eye on the other cul-de-sacs. Her already high adrenalin kicked up a sharp notch.

Somewhere off to their left, Loki hissed. His gun barked. He laughed afterward, soft and low. "That's one twin down," he said, coaxing, gloating. "Got her right in the throat, Tomas. Bet that hurts."

But?he hadn't?"Still up," she breathed, and risked a glance in to see if Tomas was done checking the cul-de-sac he had vanished into. Or was Loki just trying to bait them out again?

Jackie: Whatever joker hooked us up with the code names had a bad sense of humor. Loki (Ivan Andersen, per his dog tags) was a trickster, loved to set up traps and shit to draw people in so that he could snipe them from behind.

Tomas eeled out of the cul-de-sac. He took one look down at the boy who lay nearly at his feet, knocked out by the force of the rubber bullet punch to the chest. He looked up at her, pointed in Loki's direction and down at the boy, mouthed what the fuck?

She shook her head quickly, an I-don't-know of an answer that barely stirred her short-cropped hair. Then she shrugged and tilted her head up toward the top of the boxes, gestured toward Loki's voice. The gloating had given one of their assigned opponents away, anyhow.

He slid the strap of his rifle onto his shoulder, knelt and offered his hands out with fingers laced together for her to use as a stirrup. She slung her rifle and used his offered hands as the step up to reach the top edge of the boxes. Then she hauled herself up by main force and a breath let out very slowly so that she wouldn't make any betraying noise. Once she was flat on top of the crates, she reached down her hand to help give Tomas the extra lift. If there were copies of them running around in the warehouse, she didn't want to lose track of which one was actually her twin.

He caught her hand, braced himself, and heaved up beside her, throwing a knee over the box and rolling over. The noise was covered by another rattle of gunfire. "Yeah," he whispered into her ear when he settled in. "Totally asking that Morana chick out. I bet I get to third base on the first date."

Jackie: I?m pretty sure Tomas never actually asked Morana out. I think.

She grinned back at him with her cheek flat against the rough wood, whispered back, "What odds?" Then she started a slow, quiet, and above all careful low crawl toward where they'd heard Loki's voice. She held her rifle in front of her as she went instead of keeping it slung across her back.

On the other side of the wall of boxes, Loki was waiting with his back to her, down in a crouch. Almost at his feet, out in the alley he was guarding, a copy of Jackie at about eighteen lay motionless on her back. No vest. No parka. Just a t-shirt and black pants. She wasn't breathing.

Close but no cigar, Loki. Will the real Jackie please fire now? She didn't have any qualms about it: she shot Loki square in the back of the neck with no warning. Then she spared a moment to whisper, "Idiot. I haven't worn my hair that long in eight years."

Jackie: By the way, it?s even freakier to see your own ?dead? face than it is to see your twin?s. Just for the record. So I made that stupid comment about my hair to cover up the shock. It was true, though: when we left the foster parents, my braid reached almost down to my ass. I cut it all off as soon as I realized they really weren?t going to haul us back somehow. I?ve worn my hair short ever since.

As Loki was currently sprawled out face-down across a corpse with one hell of a headache waiting to greet him when he woke up, he was in no position to answer her.

"Another one?" Tomas husked beside her, and crawled up to look down himself. "Des is still out here somewhere."

"So is Hamlet. And however many more of us there are running around. They're giving me the creeps, Tomas." She rolled over and had a look around, as best she could from her prone position. "I think we should stay high for a little while. It's too easy to get trapped down there."

"I don't get it." He scowled down at the pair of bodies. "Have you ever seen any copies of the others? I sure haven't."

"No. Not of us before this, either. Judas wept, this is bizarre. We should move. Where do you think Hamlet's holed up?" There weren't actually too many places where he could have gone to ground in this warehouse, for his preferred tactics. She wanted to kill Hamlet and Des and get the hell out of this freaky exercise. The clones were not briefed ahead of time. "Desdemona's probably not sitting still."

Jackie: Hamlet and Desdemona. Shakespeare instead of mythology, and they were polar opposites of the characters. Desdemona was a lying slut, and Hamlet? well, he might have been crazy, but it wasn?t just when the wind blew north-northwest. For the record? I got to keep Jackie because it already was a code name: Jack the Giant Killer. My real name is Catherine Maria, I just never use it. Tomas was Prince Charming.

"A place where he has maximal defense. That man's like a frickin' spider. One of the corners, you bet your sweet bippy, sister." A gunshot was followed by a short, sharp shriek that abruptly cut off. Tomas looked at her, frowning.

She traded back the look with a frown and a shake of her head. It was vaguely in the direction of one of the corners of the room, so she rolled over again and started crawling thataway. "Wish he'd just give up on asking me out. He wouldn't be half-bad if it weren't for that. And the way he swallows all the time."

"He's fucking creepy is what he is, and if you ever do go out with him I'm disowning you." A rumble of thunder made the building sigh around them. The storm outside was getting worse. "You don't know how he looks at you when you're not paying attention."

That was news. She shot a look over her shoulder at her brother, all blank huh? "How does he look at me when I'm not paying attention?" She even paused for a second or two before she kept on crawling. There was a gap up ahead, though. They were going to have to jump it or go down and then back up.

"Like he just bought a ticket to the Rape Banquet and you're the main course." His shoulder shook beside her ankle as he shivered. "Go," he whispered when they reached the gap. "I'll cover you." Famous last words.

Jackie: Ugh.

"Ugh," she said, shot a look down into the narrow alleyway between the crates, and then rolled off the side to land with a muffled thump on the floor. Down and then up.

Tomas: Malloy should have been outside in the command post with his two trainers. We didn?t understand for years why he just abandoned us, even in the middle of Saturn?s meltdown after Marius disappeared. Malloy takes the welfare of his people very, very seriously. When we found out about the nanochip in his head, about the control that Marius had over him, it made a lot more sense. He didn?t really have a choice. We?re pretty sure that he didn?t know about Marius?s little experiment with the clones and the Bliss. Maybe Jackie?ll ask him about it someday.

"This isn't funny," Tomas agreed, and fished the clip of Bliss bullets out to see whether they were sturdy enough to shatter the lock on the door. Rubber bullets weren't going to cut the mustard. "Can't rewire the horn if it's live. Where the hell is Malloy?"

"I don't know, but there's nothing on the comm. Just static." The Bliss bullets were glass cartridges encased in thin metal bands to let them be fired without instantly shattering. Not terribly useful. Jackie straightened up with an effort and turned around to watch their backs while he tried to figure the door. "If we go back in there and find where the others were dropped off...maybe one of them had a crowbar."

Tomas: I don?t know if anyone?s explained this yet, but Bliss is a drug that Saturn produced while Marius and Morana were in charge. It?s illegal. For good reason. Gets you higher than a kite and horny as hell. And it?s incredibly addictive.

"Okay. If any of them are ambulatory and upright, we should probably do some enlisting." After she heard the crack of a couple of Bliss bullets, he huffed a sigh and climbed to his feet. "It's no good, baby girl."

"Fuck. All right, back in. If Hercules is back on his feet, he could probably just break through the damn lock." Jackie finally gave in and stabbed herself with a dose of Venom as well. It burned out from the injection site, a wash of fire and prickles through her veins, but she gritted her teeth through it for the numbness it left in its wake. Then she checked her magazine. "We need to find more bullets, too. I'm down to fourteen rounds." Into the fray. She started for the path they'd heard the skittering feet on.

Tomas: Venom was another Saturn drug. It keeps the user going, dulls pain, ups adrenalin output. Like everything Saturn made back then, there was a definite cost. Use it too much and your heart gives out.

"We could throw him at the lock," Tomas groused, limping behind her. Ahead of her, shadows moved within the confines of the narrow alleyway. One kid?no, two, watching her like deer glimpsed in the shadows of a heavy wood.

She kept her rifle up while she moved, but they didn't give her a clear shot. Bastards. "When we get out of this, I'm getting my waffle, with the strawberries, and I'm damn well getting my cocoa too. The good stuff." She was talking as a distractor, now, to keep from losing her mind.

"You and your damned cocoa." He sounded like he was smiling, behind her. The sentence was punctuated with a crack of his rifle. "Me. Seventeen or eighteen. Looked like I had Des' knife."

"If there's one per year of us we're so fucked." Even if they only started at the walking-talking years. She rounded a corner and snapped off a shot of her own, "You again, fourteen or so. When you had that mullet. Don't knock the cocoa, either."

"I loved that mullet! Business in the front, party in the back." He provided cover for her as they reached Hercules, who was sitting up and rubbing glumly at his head. "Do not knock the mullet." Herc responded to this pronouncement by looking at them like they were both insane.

She was getting toward insane, so Herc?s look was probably justified. The vague giddiness of the drug was finally starting to set in, so she was cheerful when she crouched down by Hercules. "Shouldn't have come in through the gap earlier, but we've got bigger problems. There's an army of us-clones," she gestured between herself and Tomas, "of various ages running around in here. Horn should've gone off, but it was disabled?pulled from the wall?and the front door's locked. Comms aren't working. Want to join us?"

Jackie: Venom has some weird side effects. You don?t feel pain, and you have all this extra adrenalin running through your system? it makes you a little goofy when it hits, silly. I?m still surprised that Brett decided to join us after the way I summed things up for him, actually.

"Are you?what?" It took a few seconds before it looked like the message sank in. He climbed up and looked around them, reaching for his rifle. "Us-clones? What?" Brett was not a big talker. In fact, as far as Jackie could tell, Brett relied on his muscles more than his brain or his words. That was okay. Just at the moment they needed muscles.

Jackie: I was so wrong about that initial assessment. In my defense, Brett had played his role to perfection. I love that big lug now, almost as much as Tomas.

"No idea. Wondered briefly if we were going crazy, but no. Definitely little copies of us running around in here with guns." She ducked back into their original hidey-hole carefully and kicked around for some more ammo, but no. All gone. Damn. "I think you can probably break the lock on the front door open."

Brett shook his head, it seemed more at the words coming out of her mouth than as a denial of what she was suggesting. "Okay. Point me at it." He cracked his knuckles, slung the rifle over his shoulder. "Cover me and point me in the right direction."

She jerked her chin in the direction of the tunnel they'd just come down to find him. "Tomas has your front, I've got the rear, and we're not slowing down on the way." If they happened to pick up Loki, bonus, but she wasn't going to go looking for him. "Ready, old man?"

Jackie: Now I wish we had sidetracked for Loki. It was probably already too late for him, but he wasn?t that bad.

"Go." That was from Tomas, ahead of her now. Brett shook his head again, unlimbered the rifle and took off at a fast trot.

Yay drugs! If it weren't for the Venom, she wouldn't be able to keep up, and the trouble she was still having breathing would be bothering her a lot more. As it was, Jackie trotted after Tomas and Brett with her gun swinging. There were occasional cracks of rifle-fire from ahead, and she let off a shot or two or six of her own on the way. When it seemed like they were actually on their way to getting out, the kid-clones started crawling out of the woodwork.

"Fuck!" barked Tomas when a toddler?a toddler?toddled out from behind a crate. The little kid had to use both hands to heft the gun it pointed toward them. When Brett shot it, its dreamy smile turned into an O of surprise, and it and its pretty red hair bounced backward out of sight.

Tomas: I still have nightmares about the whole thing. He made us fight ourselves. Like, little-kid versions of ourselves. Like I wasn?t already fucked up enough from my childhood?

Another of the kids had liberated a knife from Des or Loki, and came darting out of a side passage, aiming for one of Jackie's poor abused kidneys. Okay, the knife was not cool at all. She managed to swing and shoot the copy of Tomas trying to stab her (six? maybe seven?) but not before it slashed into her side with the blade. The vest deflected a lot, but not the entire blow, and Jackie added a "Motherfucker!" to the chorus as they kept running. She picked off herself at fifteen right before the clone jumped onto Brett's back, and nearly missed another little boy?no more than three or four?when he dashed around a corner straight at them.

Tomas took down a seventeen-year-old Jackie, and a nine-year-old him and seven-year-old him. That was when he ran out of bullets. So he switched to the Bliss rounds, which had absolutely no effect on the fifteen-year-old Jackie that tackled him and nearly ate his face off before Brett shot her in the side of the head.

"Sheez," Brett rumbled admiringly to Jackie. "You're mean."

Jackie: I think we figured out the clones had been modified right about then. Bliss would have worked on Tomas or me.

Jackie could see the break in the crates ahead, and took the lead while Tomas was still clambering back to his feet after being tackled. "Better hope so, Hercules, because I've got three rounds left. Get that door open." There were more than three kids in their way. She shot her last rounds off, bang-bang-bang, and then charged into the two in the immediate path with her rifle held crosswise as a battering ram, or a barrier, or a club.

Brett let Tomas get himself under control, then handed him his rifle?that still had eleven rounds in it?and rushed the door. When he reached it, he went boot-first into it. The metal groaned, obviously surprised to have had a Hercules thrown at it. Then he kicked it again. And again. Meanwhile, Tomas shot past her shoulder at one of the two Jackie was rushing.

With the second clone out of the way, she was able to go into a low dive and take out the copy of herself at the knees, then grab its hair and slam the back of its skull into the floor. Three times before the thing finally stopped trying to fight back. "Judas wept, this is insane," she rasped as she hauled up to her feet again, running for the door that Hercules was well on the way to kicking down.

Jackie: Some habits stick, and we got beaten too often for ?taking the Lord?s Name in vain? ? I still say Judas wept instead of Jesus or God, when I?m swearing.

The lock shrieked as it broke. Brett bent and hauled the door up, revealing a blizzard-bound wasteland only faintly dotted with the blue lights of the road leading into town. The vehicles they'd used to drive out were missing. He and Tomas stared. Her brother said, softly and with deep feeling, "Motherf***."

That just about summed it up. "Blizzard or in here?" She was still watching behind them. "There are more of them still running around in here. A lot more. Tomas and I have parkas, but I didn't find any others." She reached up again to try her earpiece, in the faint hope that opening the door might have improved the connection somehow. Buzz. Buzz buzz crackle buzz. Nothing.

"Where the hell is Malloy?" Tomas breathed out. "We better head to town. We can trade off on wearing the parkas. They should be big enough to fit each of us. I'll sound off every two minutes." At least they had the road lights to keep them from wandering off into a cold death.

"All right. Give me a second." She needed to slap a bandage onto her side before they went out into the sub-zero temperatures, or she'd get frostbite on her open wound. Not good. She shrugged out of her parka to pass to Brett while she worked on the bandage thing. "When we get back, I'm going to the diner. I'm going to have my waffles with the strawberries, and my cocoa, and then I'm going to kill Malloy. And after that I'm going to kill the Boss. Who's with me?" They were leaving Loki, Des and Hamlet's corpse to the tender mercies of the kids. She didn't care.

The guard booth was empty. There was no activity around the Quonset huts, no soldiers in winter gear moving around the visible arc of the camp. No alarms went off as they rolled past the fence without clearance. From the back seat, Tomas said, "This is starting to feel like one of those zombie movies..."
The wind skirled gusts of snow down the center road. It didn't look like it had been plowed. A number of tire tracks were visible, but the blizzard was rapidly filling them in. "Magazine," Brett suggested, his dark eyes under the fierce thrust of his brow moving slowly over the view.

"I'm empty. Are there any in the back? And is the vehicle radio working?" Maybe they could get in touch with someone back at HQ. Like fucking Malloy, maybe. She turned left between the next two Quonset huts, "Armory and stores are just ahead. Even if the people are gone, maybe the supplies are still here." That would get them weapons, actual arctic gear, and maybe (if they were really lucky) some clue about what the fuck was happening. "We should probably try to get to the portal back to Rhydin."

Jackie: I was angry because I was terrified. If we hadn?t been able to make the portal back to Rhydin, it was fifteen, twenty miles to the city, at least. The blizzard was still going strong. We had to have a plan, so I started planning. Brett and Tomas let me.

"I miss Rhydin," Tomas sighed. Noisy clanking sounds followed as he dug through the roughly half-million storage containers in the back of the vehicle. Around the time she reached the armory, he provided exactly two fresh clips of live ammo. No more rubber bullets. "That's all that's in here. Looks like the whole thing was cleaned out."

"Fuck," she was too damn cold and tired and hungry to come up with something more creative. So she just jammed the truck into park and killed the engine, then yanked out the key, "Let's hope there's something left inside. And some fuel for the truck. It's almost dry." Fuck, fuck, fuck. She scowled at the snow slashing horizontally across the windshield, and then opened the door and tumbled out to push for the armory entrance.

"I want cocoa now." Tomas fell out behind her and kicked his way through the snow after her. Brett followed more slowly, sweeping looks over their surroundings as he reloaded his rifle with the good stuff.

The door was unlocked. There was nobody behind the front counter at the armory. Paperwork was scattered across it, spilling onto the floor, a clipboard sitting at an awkward angle at its base and a pen crunching under Jackie's boot. The lights were on and the barred door at the back of the room leading to the armory proper was standing open.

That was so bad. "That is so bad. Where's Emchan?" The supply sergeant. "I hope whatever happened here didn't happen to the diner." She fumbled and found a knife, pulling it out before she kicked open the barred door the rest of the way to look in. "You're right. It is like a zombie movie."

Something shifted in the shadows.

Tomas: Just like a fucking zombie movie.

"I'm going to kick your ass later, old man," she hissed as she swung into the room and tried to get a better look at whatever was shifting in the shadows back there, "You had to start making with the horror movies."

"It wasn't me!" Tomas yelped. "Don'tusethegunyouidiotit'sanAMMODUMP!" He slapped Brett's rifle muzzle out of the way. Whatever had moved, it was relatively small. Maybe one of the toddlers again.

Jackie really hated the toddlers. "Sure, you say that, but as soon as you mention zombie movies..." Guns, ammo, arctic gear (at least one more parka), fuel. Nice simple shopping list. "Stick close. Guns, ammo, arctic gear or another parka, fuel. Left or right?"

"You forgot the portal," Brett muttered. "That's number one." He looked around them, jerked as the gate creaked. "Left."

"I don't know where the portal is, though. At least the rest of it was in here." She went left, and muttered, "Thank something for Emchan and his obsessive organization." There were labels on the ends of the shelves, and at each inventoried spot on every aisle. Just like going grocery shopping, "Guns and ammo, aisle six," and, "Do either of you actually know where the portal is? Or is supposed to be?"

Jackie: I still don?t ?Thank God?, either.

"Headquarters, I think. They made everybody come through at night and prance around in the dark," Tomas said. He was browsing down the aisle, looking for gun cases and ammo. Brett was busy keeping an eye ahead and behind.

"Command post is on the other end of the camp." Jackie was rifling along the shelves looking for something useful.

None of them were looking up. A mini-Jackie dropped off the top shelf onto Hercules' broad shoulders, as if she were trying for a piggy-back ride, with bonus knife along for the ride. Brett shouted, slamming back into the shelf and sending a cascade of boxes full of plastic combs and toilet paper and BDUs and ammo and toothpaste and who-fucking-knew into the aisle with them. Baby Jackie stabbed enthusiastically at the back of his parka, hooting like a monkey. Her small arm wasn't terribly strong, and the parkas were thick?the knife only made it in half an inch or so before Tomas yanked her off and banged her on the ground until she dropped the knife.

Right. Couldn't forget to look up. Jackie had spun at the noise, and then spun again to keep watch while Brett and Tomas dealt with the baby version of her. "Guns are further down," she said, and started trotting toward the cases she'd finally spotted ahead, "Grab another parka from the pile there!"

"Oh, shit," Tomas barked out, as the kid gave another hooting cry and he looked down into the kid's mouth. Then the butt of Brett's rifle smashed down into the little girl's face. Tomas backed away, shuddering, as that face began to collapse into itself, smoking in the same way as the dead teenager they'd found in the truck and oozing green fluid. Brett swept flammable boxes out of the way with a few well-placed kicks. The two men shared a single look, and then Tomas went parka-hunting past the gag-inducing stink that suddenly filled the air.

Loaded down with two rifles and a couple of handguns, Jackie found the ammo and swept boxes of it into an empty ammo tin, along with extra magazines, "Fuel for the truck! Any ideas?" She called out as she jogged back. "What was the 'oh, shit' for?"

"No tongue," Brett answered for Tomas, who was still shaking his head in the throes of a major freak-out as he pulled on a fresh parka. "Fuel's probably at the depot. Other side of the base. We can split up or go together." Brett obviously hadn't seen many horror movies.

Jackie: It was worse than any horror movie. We don?t know why Marius didn?t give them tongues, either. Maybe it was too hard to do. Maybe he didn?t want them talking to us.

"No splitting up," she said, now loaded for bear (or armies of killer kid clones). She had strapped on a pair of handguns, had two more looped over each arm for Brett and Tomas. She also had a replacement rifle for herself and two extras over her shoulders, and she was carrying an ammo tin in either hand. "Here, grab yours," while she picked up a warmer parka and some gloves. "There might be enough left in the truck to get us over to the fuel depot. At least a lot closer than here."

"You're still bleeding, dumbass," Tomas said to Brett's broad back. "She stabbed you. Take the coat off so we can make sure you don't fall on me. You'd squish me. I don't like to be squished. My testicles in particular are delicate little flowers of manhood." As Brett started stripping, Tomas said to Jackie, "You see any first aid kits? There's not a lot of blood, I think some gauze and tape'll get it."

"How would you know about your testicles? They haven't had any play in weeks. No kits in this aisle." She crouched down to check on her bandage. Still riding the Venom high, she wouldn't feel the cut in her side for probably another thirty minutes, but then it was going to hurt like fuck. "Two over, I think. But there should still be some gauze and tape left in the parka Brett was wearing." She eyed her bandage critically, "If he has any left over after he's taped up I could probably use another layer; this one's starting to soak through. So first aid kit, fuel, HQ. Portal the fuck out of here, diner, sleep, kill whoever did all this. Maybe find out what the fuck happened to everybody else."

"Cocoa," Brett said. Tomas looked at him like he'd grown a second head, then went off (still shaking his head, yes, like he had Tourette's or something) to find the kit. Brett was left to rummage around in his pockets. "Not right to talk about a man's parts like that, Jack," he said in a disappointed rumble, and found gauze and tape. His shirt came off to reveal muscle on top of muscle around muscle. It was a wonder he could put his hands down at his sides.

Jackie: Trust Brett to remember the cocoa. And given what we found out later, his comment about a man?s parts is even more hysterical.

All that muscle meant Brett probably wasn't flexible enough to bandage up his back. "Definitely cocoa. He's not a man, he's my brother. It's a whole different set of rules. How much time do you spend lifting?" She claimed the gauze and tape so that she could slap one into place and secure it down over the gouge, "This isn't too bad, really. Just muscle. She would have had to go six inches deep to hit anything else."

He worked on his stoicism, scowling at the shelf. "Depends on the training schedule. Hour a day up to three."

"Found something," Tomas said. "You want the baby kit, or the supersize?"

"Supersize me, old man," Jackie called back while she ripped off a piece of tape and plastered it down the edge of the gauze. "The rate we're going, we're going to need it," she muttered to Brett while she finished taping down his bandage. "All set. You should be lifting again in no time. I don't have the patience for three hours a day of almost anything. Works for you though." With that she slapped another piece of gauze into place over her previous bandage.

He rolled that shoulder, mumbled something under his breath and invaded the black trainees' shirt again. The parka went on after it. After eyeing her bloody waist he stood and glowered off into space until Tomas returned, lugging a suitcase-sized kit. "No me-monsters," he said breathlessly. "Let's get the fuck out of here."

Jackie finished taping down her second layer of bandages, yanked her parka back on, and then shoved another rifle and two of the handguns at Tomas. She gave the last two pistols to Brett along with one of the ammo tins so that she could pull out the key to the truck, "Sounds good." Time to run. Or jog, anyway. Brett shoved gun and ammo into his pockets, unlimbered the rifle and gestured at her to move. Tomas brought up the rear, juggling handguns and a suitcase full of happy drugs.

Jackie: Turned out it was a good thing we grabbed the full-sized medkit instead of the smaller travel version.

She moved, up the aisle and through the door that separated the stores from the front desk. On the way, "Anyone know if it's farther to the fuel depot or HQ? It might make more sense just to take the truck as far as it'll go toward HQ before it runs out of gas than to try for the depot."

"Fuel's on the other side of the camp," Brett told her. "HQ's in the middle. Don't know where."

"I know where it is," Tomas said, finally getting all his gear stowed and getting a better grip on the case. "It's about a mile down the main road, then off to the..." he paused, squinted, stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth, "left. Off to the left. We'll have to watch for the side road."

"Can't see," Brett agreed, morose.

"I hate this fucking world," Jackie agreed with both of them, whole-heartedly. "Let's just strike for HQ then. We can probably get almost there with what's left in the truck. Since you know where it is, do you want to drive?" She yanked open the door to the blizzard and cursed again when the icy-cold air slapped her in the face.

"No," gasped Tomas as the interior heating, that had gone past too much into juuuust right, suddenly seemed to fail him again. But it wasn't a fresh kid army...just the cold. "But I will." He slogged back out to the vehicle. "Maybe they're our sins come home to roost! Ruth always said, you know?" he shouted at her past the wind, before climbing into the truck.

Tomas: Ruth was our foster mother. She was a delightful human being, let me tell you. A real paragon.

"Well, shit." She said, stopping for a second before she shoved through the snow toward the truck and hauled herself in, with Brett on her heels, "If that's what it is, we're screwed. There are thousands of them left." Then she leaned up to drop the key into Tomas' hand.

Jackie: Ruth liked to have us list our ?sins? while she was using the switch on us. Forgetting one of them off the list was a sin, too.

Jackie tied up the parka and swore when she hefted it. "Shit. Maybe I should be lifting three hours a day." A little bit of juggling let her find a way to loop it over one arm and still manage her rifle. "All right, let's move out and hope the little fuckers aren't waiting to ambush us there. Or already poured through to the other side."

Jackie: Now that was a real nightmare-inducing thought.

A single heh at the door was Brett's response to the comment before he slid back out into the hallway, moving with the smooth foot-over-foot catlike gait that they'd all been trained into. The rifle was back at his shoulder. Behind her, Tomas huffed out a put-upon sigh as he hefted the medical case. "If you start lifting three hours a day I'm just going to shoot myself. You're almost better than me as it is."

"Don't worry, I'm not patient enough for that. Even if muscles like that," she jerked her chin up toward Brett moving down the hall ahead of them, "Would be useful right now." At least the training had worked out the clumsiness so many big men seemed to have. She took a breath to appreciate Brett?s feline smoothness before she focused on keeping watch while they moved. "What do you mean almost, anyway?"

"Because it had the point scores, too." He sounded exceedingly smug. "You beat me in marksmanship by two points, but I beat you in tracking and surveillance." The hallway teed; Brett cleared both ends before sending a fast glance over his shoulder at them. Which way?

"That's because you're a sneaky bastard. I don't have the patience for that, either." She shook her head?no clue?and tilted the question on toward Tomas, "Do you remember which way, master tracker?" She hefted the bundle in the parka again with an, ?oomph? and resettled her rifle.

Tomas thought about it, head tipping back and his lively eyes moving over the ceiling as he tried to orient himself. He nodded confidently. "Left, I think," he said, and jerked his gun thumb in that direction.

"Left it is," she tilted her head that way, and then followed Brett down the corridor as they went. Her nerves wouldn't settle. She kept waiting for more of the kids to jump out at them. Fuck, this was awful. "I hope it's deserted because everybody evacuated, not because they all got eaten. How much longer do you think the power is going to keep running here?"

"The generator's microfusion," Mister Talkative said from point. They were coming up on a dogleg. Unsurprisingly, a gang of four kids were waiting for them on the other side, having heard their coming. One gained a giant hole in her middle via Brett's rifle before another jumped him. Two others, sixteen or so, pounced past him, moving too fast to be normal human as they leaped for the girl with the parka full of paper.

Not fair. Jackie swung the parka full of paper at one of them, knocking the younger copy of herself into the wall, but they'd come with too much separation to hit both of them at once. "Motherfuck?" was all that she got out before she went down under teen-Tomas and Brett struggled with his spare.

Jackie: I think the worst part was being forced to kill Tomas, over and over again. I know they were clones, but ? well, that was the worst. For me, anyway.

Tomas shot the one Jackie smacked aside. Then he dropped the medical case and focused on waiting for his opening. When he got it, he drove the gun butt as hard as he could down into the back of his younger self's skull.

Brett's throat was scratched up by a Jackie with too-long nails, but all those muscles were good for something?he got the leverage he needed, flipped and put his weight into a knee in the Jackie's gut. She wheezed and moaned at him as he pried her jaw open, looked disgusted at what he saw inside.

That was the second time that day Jackie had been choked, and she rolled onto her side once the Tomas on her went limp with a crushed head. She wheezed for a few seconds before she croaked, "I hate these things." Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. Okay. Her throat would recover eventually. She clambered back to her feet and hauled the parka up again. "No tongue?"

"No tongue," Brett agreed, morose. The sixteen-year-old Jackie continued to fight him, not responding to any of his attempts to talk to her. Sighing, he shook his head and employed some of that mighty arm strength to punch her out and then break her neck. Tomas leaned against the wall, shuddering.

Tomas: I mean, think about it. Dozens of little yous running around with no tongue, trying to kill you. All we can think was that the original plan was to pull everybody else out and leave us to be tested. Of course, that plan was shot to hell when Marius had to exit stage left, real fast.

"I want," she croaked, "to get out of here." She wasn't shuddering; she was on the other end of the spectrum, abnormally calm past the rough edges of her voice. Everything she focused on had crystal-clear edges, but it was hard to focus on more than one thing at a time. Dangerous. Shocky. She shook her head sharply to try to knock herself out of it. "Let's go."

"Come on, sweetheart," Tomas said hoarsely, and picked up the pack-parka in one hand and the case in the other. "You take tail." Maybe the switch of position would help. He threw a nod at Hercules, whose fingers came away bloody after touching his neck; the bigger man nodded back, recovered his rifle and tossed a fresh clip at Jackie.

She caught the clip handily enough, anyway. It practically stood still in mid-air for her while the rest of the hallway around it blurred. Then she loaded it into her rifle with a sharp click, and nodded at Tomas and Brett, "I've got tail. Let's move," she repeated. This place was a fucking nightmare. She half-turned so that she could move while still watching behind them, in case more of the little fuckers sneaked up from behind.

They passed through the dogleg. A big set of double doors lay beyond. As soon as he saw them, Brett started shaking his head again. "It's not live. Going low." With that warning, he hauled one door open and dropped to his knee on the edge of the other. The doors were steel and reinforced; it would take more fire than they'd seen the kids use to punch through it and get to him.

Tomas: He can sense gates. It?s the craziest thing. We didn?t know that then, either. It?s part of his training.

The room beyond was a small maze. There were crates, and walls of plastic sheeting, and the myriad banks of electronica required to maintain the processing power necessary for a Nexus portal. The portal itself was a crescent-moon arc that was thirty or more feet tall around the anthill of abandoned stuff. It should have been flaring purple like a bad attempt at a Doctor Who intro remake, pulsing and flaring like a long violent violet tunnel into alternate realities. But the space inside the arc was empty.

"Got high," Jackie flattened herself against the wall and did a bit more staring at Brett between looking into the room for more kids and watching their tail. "How did you know it wasn't live?" Hercules was showing himself a lot brighter than his initial charge into the gap way back in the warehouse had made him seem. Unexpected fucking depths.

"Would've heard it through the door," he said, which was true, but was not how he knew. His rifle was sweeping back and forth, quartering the view for any hint of movement. The human eye was sensitive to movement, connected as it was to a mammal's souped-up brain. "I can go look," he offered quietly. "Could just go for it." Brett only offered it instead of doing it. At some point, Jackie had become the de facto leader of their little team.

Jackie would probably spend some time mulling over the reasoning behind the doomed charge once they were out of this fucking mess. Right at the moment she was otherwise occupied. She hissed between her teeth and popped off another shot down the corridor they'd come from, knocking a ten-year-old her back in a splash of blood and brains. "I still don't like splitting up." She had no idea how she'd wound up as leader by default, but not knowing wasn't going to stop her. "Let's just go for it. It won't get any easier for waiting." There was that impatience again. She gritted her teeth as the slice in her side throbbed again, as talking rasped her raw throat, and tilted her head toward the door.

Jackie: I?ve gotten better about being patient since then, at least a little bit. In this case, I don?t think waiting would?ve done anything but given them more time to prepare, though. I still think it was the right decision.

"Going for it in three, two, one?" and Brett exploded into motion, sprinting like a quarterback toward the right side of the plastic sheeting maze. Tomas bit back a yelp between clenched teeth and took off after him, parka and case bouncing in his twinned grips. Their movement was shadowed by wisps of figures shifting behind the translucent walls.

Jackie pounded after them with her rifle swinging back and forth from one shadow to the next, but she held off on firing yet: with the distortion of the plastic sheeting, un-aimed shots would waste more ammo than they had. Then an eighteen year old her rounded a crate with a gun in hand, and Jackie shot first. "They're armed?"

Jackie: The ones waiting for us in the portal room must have hit the supply hut before we did. It?s the only place they could have gotten the guns.

"Shit," Tomas gasped, and dropped the case to pull his handgun. The case tumbled corner-over-corner off to Jackie's right. Brett paused, took aim, fired twice into the sheeting. More gunfire erupted behind them.

Jackie half-spun and shot at the gunfire coming from behind them. "Keep moving," she barked, and ducked down to grab the med case while she backed up. "Don't slow down, don't stop, just keep fucking moving and let's get the fuck out of here."

Hercules took the corner, pulled hard on the trigger when he ran into a nest of kids of all ages and emptied his clip in a matter of a few seconds. It clattered onto the concrete when he ejected it and slapped a fresh one in.

Jackie: People who haven?t fired an automatic rifle always overestimate how long you can keep shooting with one. A thirty-round clip on full auto? No more than four seconds. The movies always get that wrong.

"Judas wept," she gasped as she emptied her clip almost as fast into a swarm from behind. The med case had to fall to the wayside again so that she could reload. Priorities, after all. If she didn?t reload, she wouldn?t be alive to use the med-kit. "C'mon, c'mon, where's the fucking control bank," she wasn't really asking either of the others, just talking for the sake of talking and sanity.

"Got it," Brett called from somewhere up ahead. Tomas' gun cracked once, twice. "Need that cocoa now, Herc!" he shouted ahead, and behind, "Leave the case!"

"Already gone," she was still backing up, but after that call she turned and pelted after the others, jumping and dodging over dead copies of her and her sibling and the rotten acidic blood they were leaking. She skidded in one puddle and nearly heaved at the stench before she found her feet and sprinted after the others again. "What's the word?" she called ahead.

Predictably, it wasn't as easy as making the connection and throwing a switch. "It's locked," Tomas said as she rounded the final corner. He was cradling Brett's rifle, the filled parka at his feet. There was a little too much white showing around his irises, but his voice was calm.

"Thirty seconds." That was from Brett, whose fingers were flying over the keyboard, his dark eyes fixed on the small holographic screen above. He was distracted. She just barely had time to process the sight of Tomas lifting his rifle again and aiming almost directly toward her, when the violent chatter of gunfire sounded from behind.

It felt like being punched, at first. Just impact that hit her in the back and knocked her down into a face-first sprawl on the floor. Her rifle clattered out of her left hand and bounced once. She had two or three seconds to wonder what the fuck had just happened, and then the hurting started.

Jackie: Everything was so sharp. I remember that. Crystal-clear, like I?d been moving in a fog all day and then someone wiped the lens clean. I saw the rifle bounce up, off to my left. I even had time to notice the cracks in the concrete floor as they came up to my face.

Tomas: I saw her get shot. I hadn?t been so scared since the day our foster father broke her leg in a car door for daring to want to go to college.

Above her head, Tomas started swearing, long beautiful multiply-anatomically impossible strings of obscenities. Off to her left, the humming of a great engine powering up warred with the roaring of the hurt in her ears. After another crackle of gunfire Tomas dropped Brett's rifle and snatched up hers. She watched Brett?s empty rifle fall to the floor with bizarre clarity, every edge crystal-clear. "Cover me," Brett said, and ran off into a gray fog punctuated with gunfire and flashes of purple light. He was back a minute later, kneeling beside her. "Sorry," he said, which he apparently felt was sufficient apology for ripping her in two when he picked her up in a fireman's carry.

Oh, wait, she'd thought the hurting had started before? No, no, she'd been wrong. Now was the hurting, and she barely managed to gasp out, "S'okay," between gritting her teeth to keep from screaming and trying to remember how to breathe. Everything was upside-down and jostling dizzily. The gunfire was sharp white flashes over the sea-sound of the pain, and she fixated for a few seconds on the scratches on Brett's neck where her clone had torn at it.

They were ugly. Kid Jackie had been rough with the man. She had a crazy moment of wanting to apologize. Then he turned, the room spinning dizzily around them. Shouted something at Tomas, and started running again, jostling and bouncing her with every step as he ran up an incline. Icecrest flipped upside down and turned inside out as they passed through the portal. So did she. Everything went black.

Jackie: Going through the portal was the single most physically painful thing I?ve ever experienced. I?m just glad I don?t remember more of it. At least we were out. We were going home.