"Any sign?" asked the clone.
Pippa shrugged. "What, of the ganger mutants or your soldier friends? Or maybe the two aren't mutually exclusive?"
The clone smiled. "I work for the Mistress. My contact is Ziggurat. And yes, they will be searching for me. The Gangers do...
strange
things to communication devices. And engines. They'll wait for morning, knowing I'll head for the valley below. Nice easy pickup. If I survive."
"What, so they'll be willing to let you die in the mountains? Some friends!"
"Who said they were my friends?" The clone stirred the stew, and met her own gaze. It was like looking into a mirror. The two women were
identical.
Clones. Freaks.
Pippa shivered.
"I'm a mercenary," continued the clone. "I work for money."
"And you copied me?"
"Yes." She gave a tight little smile. "A long time ago. And I've kept the...
structure.
It suits my profession."
"You killed Keenan's wife and children," said Pippa, not looking up, but staring into the flames. They danced like tiny orange demons, obscene and erotic. She watched the fire and felt her anger rising, felt her hatred seeping into every molecule of her being. She had carried the false guilt for too long, her brain twisted and confused like broken shards of mirror. Now here was this creature, this diluted echo of herself, this very mockery of her own life and being and existence. This was the tool QGM had used, to control Combat K, to control Keenan and Pippa. For, with Keenan's family dead, he had become the ultimate QGM machine. Lost his humanity. Became the perfect killer...
And Pippa?
Pippa was the fucking scapegoat.
She thought back to Hardcore, the Sick World... thought back, and dreamed her dreams in the twisting leaping fire, remembered Keenan, and tears rolled down her face. She remembered Keenan's gentle touch, the touch of a killer...
Pippa gave a little shake of her head, caught Keenan watching her, and returned his smile. She started, wondering how she looked, and stood, locating a polished plate of chrome by the door. She stared into the face of a stranger, a battered, bruised, bloodied, tattered hooligan, a street-tramp with crap in her matted hair, grease and dirt-streaks on her swollen face. 'Shit,' she muttered.
Something touched her hand, and she looked down at Keenan's questing fingers. She took his hand, and he squeezed her fingers, and in that simple single moment, in that spark of connection, of brushed skin, of honest intimacy, she suddenly realised everything was all right between them.
Well, not all right, but the kill had gone. Keenan no longer wanted her dead. And that, in itself, was a massive leap forward; a milestone achievement of incredible understanding. Possibly... even forgiveness.
I didn't do it, she said to herself.
And she almost believed it.
I didn't kill his family.
It was a set-up. I was framed.
But how? Why? And by whom?
And a word leapt to her mind, and she felt a tickling sensation that swept through her veins, and this connection with Keenan, this reawakening of trust, sent sparks running up and down her spine, and seemed to ignite the alien essence left in her by the Kahirrim, Emerald.
Ganger
, came the word.
Search the ganger
. And Pippa knew. Knew it was her employer, Quad-Gal Military, who had turned her into what she had become; but more than that, they had betrayed her, made Keenan hate her. In a flash of understanding, she realised QGM had murdered Keenan's family. But why? Why would they do such a thing? And how had they used her as the puppet?
Did she really use scissors?
Pippa realised she was crying. Keenan stood, his body close to hers, rocking gently with the lull of the charging train. The motion pushed them together, and for a brief instant the lengths of their bodies touched. They shifted away, and Pippa looked up into his eyes.
"
It wasn't me," she said.
"
Shh," said Keenan, and touched her lips.
"
I wouldn't do that to you."
Keenan grinned, like a skull on speed. He wanted to say, of course you wouldn't, I believe you, I love you, I know you would never do anything to harm my family. But he didn't believe it. He knew; knew Pippa was a killer, a psychotic assassin of the lowest order. He knew it. She knew it. And she knew he understood her soul. The dark corners. The dark places only she, alone, could explore in the lost hours of the night.
Instead, she rested her head against his chest. And was happy with that.
Except now, now he was fucking
dead
, twisted into the heart of the machine god known as VOLOS. Or at least as good as dead; no longer an individual entity, but a strand within a strand within a million strands. Keenan was good and gone, part of a chemical soup.
Her head came up and she gazed long and hard at her clone. "You have caused me great pain."
"I did a job. Was
paid
to do a job. The same as you."
"I would never have slaughtered Keenan's family like that. It was brutal. Unnecessary. You're a fucking disease, and I'm going to give you a cure," she rose, yukana out, eyes reflecting the fire, which turned her, Pippa, the
real
Pippa, into a demon.
"Wait," said the clone, and held out a hand.
"You're going to die, bitch. I'm going to carve you up like you carved up Keenan's kids."
"Wait! I have something to say. Something important."
"Oh, yeah? There's nothing you could say to stop me carving out your heart..."
"I'm not the clone," she said.
Pippa halted, head twisted, lips in a snarl. She gave a laugh more like a bark.
"
What?
"
"I'm not the clone," repeated Pippa's clone. "You are."
"
Get to fuck.
Like I'd buy that crock of shit..."
"Tell me about your childhood."
Pippa laughed, and placed one hand on her hip, the other holding the yukana loosely. "What's this going to be? Your basic, back-street abortion-butcher psycho-analysis? You got a form with tick boxes on it, love? Maybe you want me to take a Voight-Kampff test?"
"How could I know about the fire? About Emelda? About the
pig roasting...
"
"
Where's daddy?" she asked, wondering why her daddy hadn't rescued her.
"
He's been burned. In the fire."
Then the paramedics were there, checking her over and rushing her into the ambulance and away, to the burns unit at the local hospital. Most of her hair was scorched away, and the back of her neck and entire back seared by flame to a black, charcoal cinder. When the fire wall had leapt at her, she turned to run...
Pippa blinked, now, remembering the following months of pain, the skin-grafts, the agony. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes, for here and now the smell of frying flesh reminded her of her own, all those years ago, when she'd been nothing but an innocent little girl. She discovered, much later, her father had fallen asleep, in bed, with a cigarette. The happy glowing little cig had burned down to its filter, a long and delicately balanced cylinder of ash, a mocking middle finger of grey which gradually crumbled, and ignited the duvet. In seconds her father's legs were consumed, and he ran from the house, screaming, setting fire to the stairs and landing in his fast, self-preserving exit - thus condemning Pippa to a fire-ensnared tomb. If it hadn't been for the bravery of the firemen, she'd be dead...
"
Bastard."
She spat the word with a snarl, and even now Pippa felt the old scars on her back itching, and she thought of her father, and she hated her father. She remembered the thick yellow cream, remembered vividly the many skin-graft operations, six years of them, simply to return her to a semblance of normality. She remembered school, and the way she was tortured: kids were evil little bastards at the best of times, she knew, and even now she shivered, remembering the other kids chasing her with matches and lighters, making dolls of her and burning them in the classroom and playground. She'd wept, oh how she had wept and begged to be left alone. But the bullying continued, merciless, endless. Her parents couldn't stop it, her teachers couldn't stop it, because bullies were clever, cunning, they knew when to strike in those tiny moments when nobody else was around, nobody else there to witness the pain.
The worst, Emelda, a big butch lass with legs like girders and a spotted face like a burst melon, with facial lumps and frizzy hair like bad candyfloss, Emelda, yeah, Emelda had taken particular delight in torturing Pippa, chasing her on long winter mornings across frosted fields, throwing lit matches at her in class, singing, "Burn the witch, burn the witch, burn the witch!" This went on for years. For long, agonizing years. Years of subtle fear, of checking the coast was clear before leaving school and before joining the dinner queue; always the last to enter the classroom, just after the teacher, much to the amusement and general hilarity of Emelda and her group of mocking cronies. Pippa the Prick, they called her. Pippa takes Prick. Pippa the Witch. Pippa the Bitch, Pippa the Walking Corpse, fucking burnt bitch, you should have died in that fire with your mum and dad, you should be a blackened stick-corpse, stinking like fried pigmeat, lying in a mass grave for the burned, all curled up together like burnt bacon and your fingers like black twisted twigs.
They caught her by the local shops. Ironically, her dad had sent her to buy cigarettes and matches, and she stood, arms limp, matches in one hand, as the girls formed a semi-circle, cutting off her escape, and Emelda, with her frizzy mass of back-combed curly hair, snarled words filled with poison and hatred and Pippa did not understand, did not understand this hate. What had she done? She said it, finally plucked up the courage to say the words which burned in her breast.
"
Why, Emelda? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me?"
"
You fucking burnt witch, we want you to die, we hate you, hate your stupid little bitch face and stupid little burnt-stick arms and legs."
There was no reason. Something snapped inside Pippa.
She smiled, even as Emelda slapped her a stinging blow across the face, making her skin smart with an imprint of fat, red, crooked fingers, making blood trickle from her split lip, and Pippa's eyes turned triumphant in a cold, analytical, grey glow.
"
Burn the witch?" she whispered, understanding flooding her, and she struck the match and threw it into Emelda's frizzy hair in one swift movement. Emelda's hair was a monstrosity of curled hair filled with hairspray. Flammable. Her head went up like an inferno, curls crisping and Emelda screaming like... like a live pig on a spit.
Pippa smiled as Emelda rolled around on the floor, screaming, trying desperately to put out her blazing hair. None of her friends helped. They backed away, like the cowards they were, and faded into the shadows for eternity.
Pippa stood, watching Emelda squirm, head tilted to one side, eyes bright, screams now gone as her lips melted, her skin melted, but the eyes were there, would always be there, watching her, haunting her...
"Check your back," said the clone, her words gentle,
her
words gentle. "Go on. There are no scars. You were never burned in the fire. It's a memory implant, Pippa. When my genetic code was copied, cloned,
gangered,
it contained the information for your basic construct; not wounds and scars attained after birth, modifications to your shell that are not part of the basic construct. Those burns happened to the
real
Pippa. Those scars are mine to carry, not yours to bear."
"Bullshit," snarled Pippa, swirling the yukana. "I'm going to cut you up."
"Check."
"What?"
"Reach behind yourself. Check."
Pippa stood, undecided, her mind fractured. The world tumbled down the years. How could this be happening? How could she doubt herself so? How could this be real?
What was real?
She reached behind herself, twisting, watching her clone from the corner of her eye for any tricks; and even before her fingers wormed beneath her WarSuit she knew with terrible certainty what she would find, knew what lay beneath her second skin. Her fingers touched her own cool, regular flesh. It was smooth as a baby, unblemished by fire, no scars, no terrible grafts.
No,
she thought.
This cannot be. It is impossible. It is unreal. This cannot be happening... but she had operations, operations to repair the scars, to remove the scars, to take all the bad memories away...
The clone was messing with her mind...
Destroying her memories...
And the mind can only take so much.
And so... your world folds in.
And your momma hated you.
And your father hated you.
And your friends hate you.
Friends? What fucking friends? What is friendship except a convenient word for people to get one over on each other, stab each other in the back? Hell, yes. There's too much jealousy. Too much hate. Too much pettiness. And is that it? Is that what the human machine has become? A petty, sniping, back-stabbing pile of bullshit? What happened to honour? What happened to duty? What happened to love? Washed away, pissed away in a mudslide of a million years of pettiness.