Cloneworld - 04 (29 page)

"The Mistress will never give you what you want!" panted Teddy, face chewing dirt.

Pippa bowed low, and stared in Teddy's eyes. The yukana sword shifted, tip wavering before Teddy Sourballs's eyeballs. The steel glinted, a reflection of promised death. "Well, she can say goodbye to her little monkey, then, you mass-murdering piece of shit."

The GASGAMs thundered across the landscape, hydraulics working smoothly, fluid machines rolling with ease. One had opened its chest into a kind of wired cage, and into this metal kangaroo pouch Teddy Sourballs had been flung without dignity. Steel cables had pulled her tight, compressing her face into a parody of the human.

"It hurts!" she said, muffled by the mesh, her features contorted into squares.

"Good," said Pippa, without even turning.

Pippa and her clone rode on the backs of the GASGAMs, secured by safety harnesses and heady with the rush of height and speed. The final descent from the Ganger Mountains had been a mad panic of flight, of falling rocks and scraping scree, of gasps and violent feelings of spinning vertigo as the two women rode the mechs like upright metal steeds. But The Gangers had dropped, then risen again into rocky foothills devoid of life and, thankfully, devoid of ganger deviants.

Pippa, the real Pippa, the old Pippa, the
true
Pippa - in her mind, at least - rode in silence, but her skull was a maelstrom of confusion. She doubted herself. She doubted reality. She doubted sanity.
Is this it? Is this what happens when your mind fractures? When you go insane? When reality cracks like a broken bad egg? Am I real? Am I really real? Am I Pippa, or a simple carbon copy? An imitation? A doppelgänger? I feel real. I think thoughts and feel feelings, emotions, ideas, I have memories as real as anything else in my head. Surely I'd just fucking
know
I was the real me. Instinctive. Like a lion knows to hunt meat. Like a spider knows to spin a web. In-built, a part of you. Surely I'd just know, right? Because... well, if I don't, if I can't feel something so basic, something at a molecular level, if I can't differentiate between being human, a first breed, and being a copy - well, surely I don't deserve to live?

They moved through a wasteland of rolling, desolate hills. A cold wind blew down from the mountains, and the sky was filled with towering clouds promising a fight. Pippa glanced left, to the smoothly-pounding GASGAM with its piggy-back human rider.

She said I was the clone. That she was real. But now it turns out she might be a clone.
Both
of us could be clones! What a joke. And if that's the case, where the hell is the real Pippa?

None of us want to feel like copies; we all want to be the original, the master, the template. None of us want to feel second-hand. Used. Abused. Cast aside. Another's useless fucking toy.

Am I real?

Am I Pippa?

And it went back, further and further, spearing into her memories, all the way back to that moment, that moment she hated, that she always revisited in her dreams and in her fucking nightmares... the murders. Keenan's family. It had all been so perfect - ha, yeah, right. She'd fallen in love with a married man, a man with two children, bright-eyed young things called Rachel and Ally. And then somehow they'd all ended up dead, and Pippa thought, knew, fucking
believed
that she'd done it...

Murdered them. Murdered them all.

It was unfair, so incredibly unfair; but then I find these things always are. The cool breeze ruffled my hair; filled my senses with life, and with a calmness which should have been impossible. The wall was rough under my gloves, and I smiled to myself, staring out across a dark street. Rain fell, cleansing the world with gentle acid. I revelled in the rain; it provided me with extra cover.

I stepped out, boots silent on wet alloyconcrete. The hour was late, the moon peeping from behind fists of cloud. I moved cautiously, still not sure what I would do or what the outcome would be; but I knew, knew there had to be confrontation, some form of retribution. These things could not go unpunished. There had to be justice in the world; not the insane ramblings of some aged incontinent judge, sat in his skewed wig, his only desire a lust for port and brandy and bent-over young boys later that evening. Where was the justice in that? No: this was justice, real justice, the law of the land and nature and blood.

I crossed the road, skipping onto the pavement, looked about. The world was dead. My eyes hardened.
It has to come
, I kept telling myself; this moment has to come. Like night follows day, smoke follows fire, death follows life.

The path was heavily crowded by trees: conifers, their pine scent filling my nostrils and making me yearn for a childhood in the woodland behind my home. Those days, however, were gone. Buried. I walked slowly, almost reluctantly, until I reached the door. The pretty house - all white and terracotta - was in darkness. Distantly, I could hear the sea.

I reached out to knock, but something stopped me. Instead, I stepped from the path and moved around the perimeter. I halted by a set of patio doors, peered in at discreet alarm sensors. I opened a small case at my hip, slid out several identity-card sized items, and eased them under the door. Remotely controlled, the two slivers of metal glided across black marble tiles and stopped. With a
click
I killed the alarms. Then I prized open the door, stepped inside, closed it behind me.

The room was still. It smelled good; home cooking mixed with lavender and the recent aroma of extinguished candles. I moved across the carpet, all senses firing, stealth a priority; I orientated myself, moved through the hall and to the foot of the stairs. The house was silent around me. It was welcoming, and yet I shivered. Something bad had to happen here tonight. I did not know what, but the conflict was
there
. Suppressed. And like a caged serpent, it could not rest.

I moved up the stairs, a ghost.

I drifted across the landing, paused, heard breathing, and a mumble in sleep. Passed the door, slightly ajar, nightlight casting a blue glow, and came to the master bedroom. Pushed the door, which opened noiselessly. Again, a blue nightlight in the corner of the room highlighted an eerie, haunting scene. Long hair lying across a pillow. A face, serene in sleep. Eyes fluttering in a dream. One pale, smooth arm thrown wide.

Jealously forced a fist down my throat, gripped my heart and wrenched it from my chest. I choked on anger, and a sudden welling hatred, and it wasn't supposed to be like this, I wasn't supposed to
feel
like this, but fury swamped me and the words I wanted to say to her,
the bitch, the cunt,
Freya, Keenan's wife, dissipated like smoke, and my eyes narrowed, and I staggered, physically
stumbled,
as my head spun, whirling with colours and darkness and images of blood, and I fell against the dresser, my hand lashing out to steady myself, my fingers curling around a gleam of long, sleek metal -

A pair of scissors.

Freya's eyes opened, fixed on me, confusion taking her mind. But then sleep fled, I saw recognition develop on her face (of course, she'd seen my pictures in the news after the incompetence that was the
Terminus5
reactor incident) and she
knew,
she
understood,
she saw I was Keenan's lover and come here to -

To what?

To sort out the problem? To talk about his
betrayal
- of us both? To attempt to
understand
the situation, and the reasons, and yet all this fled me, and a terrible demon squatted in my mind, and I lifted the scissors and saw Freya's mouth open to scream and I leapt, meaning only to silence her, to quieten her, then I was atop her struggling, powerful body and the covers fell away, exposing milk-white breasts and my hand covered her mouth, covered the scream, and she struggled,
struggled hard
, but I lifted the scissors - glanced up then, at their gleaming mated blades, then down into eyes now frightened and
understanding
, and I smiled. Smiled a thin cruel smile. I hammered the scissor blades into Freya's heart, and she went rigid at the impact. Blood fountained, pumping over me, drenching the duvet in seconds. She spasmed, started to struggle again, but I held her there, in her death throes, abusing my strength, my power, my training, my trust, my honour, and I held her there, the twin blades embedded in her chest, in her
heart
, and I watched with blank eyes as the struggling grew swiftly weak, and she slumped back, and I removed my hand from her mouth. She stared at me, and I watched the life bleeding from her eyes. Her lips trembled.

'Why?' she croaked.

And then she was dead.

I stood, reversing neatly from the bed, using the covers to wipe my gloved hands and the scissors. I stared at Freya; she seemed broken at impossible angles. I did not feel proud. But I understood. This was something: a necessity. I had not travelled to Keenan's house to kill, but the murder released a great weight from my heart. From my soul.

I turned, moved out of the bedroom.

Stopped.

Around me, the world turned.

I heard muted sobbing from the children's bedroom. They had heard. Heard the struggle. Maybe even come in, all sleepy-eyed and tousle-haired, as I pinned Freya down in her frantic last moments of precious, squirming life. In which case... they probably saw my face, my features, my joy, caught rigid in the act of murder.

I stepped towards the door and pushed it open.

I saw the young girls, silhouetted in the gloom.

They were staring at me, tears wet on their cheeks.

I put my finger to my lips.

'Shh,' I said. 'It's going to be all right.'

I walked forward, still carrying the scissors.

The fire burned brightly, demons crackling, wood popping. Pippa's clone had built it, and both women sat dejectedly, staring into the flames. Night had come, and Pippa called for a rest. She said she was tired; exhausted. What she really meant to say was,
I am haunted by the past, by bad dreams, by nightmares that stick in my brain like needles and won't fucking let me go!

The two huge GASGAM's stood, motionless, silent, flames reflecting from their dull alloy shells. Perfect killers, right? Wrong, thought Pippa as she stared into the fire.
I
am the perfect killer.
I am the ultimate fucking prize.
That's why QGM gave me a job. That's why they had me cloned. That's why I killed Keenan's family. Because I must have killed them. I barely remember it - or maybe the memories, the echoes, are implanted? Whatever. Every crime has its price. Every killer must face the consequences, somewhere down the line... and if not in this life, then the next or the next or the fucking next.

I feel my mind unravel.

I feel it spin out, drawn out unto infinity by the claws of the solar spider.

Pippa's clone, or her template, her reality, was asleep. Snoring gently. The flames cast gentle orange shadows on her features, softening them in sleep. Pippa found herself caught in the bizarre situation where she could study herself. Study her own face in sleep. And she shuddered.
I'd be better off dead
, she realised.

Better off exterminated, my ash ploughed under the soil.

Another day had passed in uncomfortable travel. Whilst the GASGAMs were unparalleled for bringing down a wide range of aerial warcraft with minimum fuss and maximum violence, they were
not
the comfiest of donkeys. As a long day of biting wind and diagonal drizzle across vast, open plains filled with hidden rocks and unexpected peat bogs finally dragged to a painful, back-breaking end, so they dismounted in the lee of a group of lode-streaked boulders beside a small stand of black conifers.

Stretching, and feeling in need of exercise, Pippa climbed up the rocky outcrop, enjoying the sudden exercise after miles and miles of cramped, thumping travel.

Fingers burning, she stood on the top and surveyed the landscape. The sun was sinking in horizontal slashes of magenta and pink. Shading her eyes, Pippa tried to make out the distant Slush Pits, but saw nothing. She turned, and behind towered The Gangers, a violent, serrated knife in the belly of the land. They looked ominous, even from this distance, and Pippa shivered. She never wanted to go back to their deviant, freak-infested peaks...

"Fresh air?"

Pippa glanced at her ganger cousin. She'd decided it best to think of this
other Pippa
in that way, in the hope of dispelling the random murder images and
lusts
which kept slashing through her mind. Whilst the sane part of Pippa thought to herself -
she's you,
the same blood, the same mind, the same person - another part of her replayed the attack back in the mountains, and even worse, the murder of Freya and the girls... and Keenan's willingness to join them in the Chaos Halls.

Pippa shuddered, and took a deep breath.

"You still want to kill me, right?"

"It's the nature of the beast."

"You're undecided. Unsure. Confused. Broken."

"I've been broken for a very, very long time."

"You can be fixed, Pippa."