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The man nodded. “First we get you
quick
into the van we’ve got in the parking lot, and then we get you to a safe house.
Then
there’ll be time for listening. If it’s anything like listening to the Goddess the way we did back there, you can have my ears any time.”

Nell nodded in satisfaction and tossed Nellie a reassuring grin. Leading the line of exhausted children, they followed the man down the hall.

NELLIE STOOD IN FRONT
of the washroom mirror, staring at her reflection. Staring back at her were the familiar slanted gray eyes, and beneath it was the usual wide grim mouth, but the small scab
to the right of her nose was new, as were the larger ones on her bald scalp. Well, maybe not quite bald. Her hair had been cut to a half-inch stubble, and only the areas immediately surrounding the scabs had been shaved completely.

Grimacing, Nellie poked at the scab to the right of her nose. After four years of the Flesh Healer, it felt like something alien on her skin. She’d gotten it almost immediately following the escape from the cathedral. Within blocks, the driver of the van had pulled into an alley and the second man had begun running a scanning device over the children’s bodies. When he’d told Nellie a tiny camera was hidden inside her right cheek, she hadn’t believed him, but he’d insisted that every tracking and surveillance implant be removed before any of them were taken to a safe house. So she’d braced herself, holding Nell’s hand tightly as a small surgical tool had cut into her wrist, then her cheek, extracting the
ID
implant and the micro-camera.

Without further comment the man had moved on to Phillip, extracting the same two devices, and then the four small children’s
ID
implants. The complete absence of implants in Fen and Nell’s double had temporarily stymied him, but they’d explained they were from the Outbacks. Neither of the men had noticed Deller, sitting transparent but protective beside Nell, and so he’d watched unimpeded as the others were blindfolded and driven to a nearby safe house, which they’d entered through a garage. Once inside the house, each of their rescuers had peeled off a mask, complete with false hair.

“Didn’t think I was that ugly, did you?” one of them had asked, grinning.

The safe house was an average-sized bungalow, with small front and back yards. The two rescuers and a woman seemed to run it, and there were others who came and went furtively, without introduction or explanation. Upon arrival, they had been fed a plain supper, then given some sleeping bags and a single bedroom in
which to sleep. When Nellie had woken the following morning, the first thing she had noticed was the silence — no security alarm beeping overhead. The she had gone into the kitchen to find an unfamiliar man waiting, a doctor with several briefcases of surgical equipment. She’d been given an anaesthetic and helped onto the table, then woken several hours later with a shaved head and a deep ache in her skull.

At first she’d been overwhelmed by the complete lack of pressure that had sat continually on her brain. Even the painkillers, which she was still taking, didn’t block the clear singing sensation that now filled her head or her almost constant awareness of the surrounding energy field. Sometimes, without the slightest warning, solid reality would fade into a massive field of shifting colors, and often the two realities overlapped, so that objects and people were surrounded by a vivid multicolored glow.

“Don’t worry,” Nell had assured her. “That happened to me too, when I first started seeing flux. It’ll get better.”

Nellie had grunted dubiously, squinting at her twin’s gold and sky blue face, but over the past several days she’d begun to get a grip, and the blob attacks, as she thought of them, were occuring less frequently.

Early this morning, one of her rescuers, a man named Shen, had taken her aside and told her that the doctor who’d removed her implants had concluded they were devices intended to control and alter brain-wave states. “Y’see, Nellie,” Shen had explained carefully, “the brain naturally shifts between different brain-wave states. But when they’re controlled by technology like implants, you can be kept in a trance state for a long period of time. When you’re in a trance, you’re very suggestible, which means you basically believe whatever you’re told. It also makes it difficult to remember what you’ve experienced.”

Eyes fixed to the floor, Nellie had nodded miserably. “I just remember little bits,” she’d said slowly. “But they’re ... bad.”

Shen had grunted quietly. “What happened to you was very bad,” he said. “I’ve seen implants removed from several Detta victims, but never four from the same skull. And there was one the doctor couldn’t get at because it’s deep inside your brain. But it’s not a surveillance device so we’ll leave it for now, along with the rest of your implants. For the next few days, you’re to concentrate on rest and recovery, and then we’ll talk about what happens next.”

What happens next
. Remembering these words, Nellie’s eyes flicked nervously across her reflection. She hadn’t talked yet, spilled the beans on any of Detta’s secrets, but it was obvious she would have to start soon. Just thinking about it caused a tightening in her throat, as if Col. Jolsen had suddenly materialized beside her and was leaning in, his hands around her neck.

Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Nellie whirled around to see her twin poke her head through the doorway. Dressed in a pair of ill-fitting shorts and a T-shirt, Nell was also sporting a shaved head with three scabs. “Sweet Goddess,” she said, obviously exasperated. “You’re not going to spend today in here just looking at yourself?”

“I can’t get used to it,” mumbled Nellie, letting the thundering of her heart slowly subside.
It isn’t Col. Jolsen,
she told herself firmly
. No one from Detta’s caught up to us ... yet.
Hesitantly she glanced at her shorn-headed reflection, then at Nell. “It’s like ... well ... The first time I saw you was in a dream, and you looked like this. And now ... well, it’s me.”

A knowing grin split Nell’s face. “I told you,” she crowed. “We’re the same person, from the same egg. C’mon, Eggo, let’s go watch TV. The news is almost on, and I want to see what kind of crap they’re putting out today.”

“Uh-uh,” said Nellie. The last thing she wanted was to watch another news broadcast. The one she’d seen two nights ago had been bad enough. She’d sat beside Phillip, who’d also been sporting a shaved head, and they’d watched disbelieving as the entire broadcast
had gone by, detailing what were supposedly the Jinnet’s latest bombings and sniper attacks, without a single mention of the Outbacks.

“But what about the Great War?” Nellie had stammered when the news program ended.

“What Great War?” Shen had asked, eyeing her curiously.

“THE Great War,” Nellie had blurted, fear hooking her throat. “The one that’s been going on for decades and decades with the Outbacks. Just last week the Interior took over Culldeen and Bersmerda, and —”

“And the rebels broke through the barrier wall south of Mandren,” Phillip had added quickly. “I saw that a couple of nights ago on the news ... well, when I was still in Advanced.”

“Not that I’ve heard,” Shen had said confidently. “Culldeen’s just fine, I drove through it last week. And there’s no war going on in Bersmerda. There’s tension, sure, and the Security Police dropping by unannounced, but no
war
. Why would you think there was a war?”

His voice had trailed off as he’d noted Nellie and Phillip’s stunned expressions. “It was on the news,” Phillip had said finally, his eyes drifting to the floor. “Every night — pictures of tanks and battles and soldiers.”

Shen’s face had softened and he’d said, “Fake newscasts. They fed you a lot of crap in there to make you believe what they wanted you to believe, so you’d do what you were told. And they controlled everything, so you had no way of double-checking the information, did you?”

Street Games,
Nellie had thought, closing her eyes under a wave of nausea.
So they could blame it on the Jinnet. But why? Why?

No immediate answer had come to her then, but over the next few days one had begun to take shape in her mind. As far as she could figure out, the purpose of Street Games was to create fear — fear within the people of the Interior. What the government obviously wanted was complete control of the population, and the
best way to get this was with the willing cooperation of its citizens. And the best way to get
that,
Nellie realized with a sinking feeling, was through fear. Fear, that is, of an enemy. Simply put, the best way to get the people of the Interior to accept the Security Police, scanners and
ID
implants, was to make them terrified of the supposed threat from Outback rebel groups. Without the shootings and bombings attributed to the Jinnet and other rebels, there would be no need for
ID
implants and scanners.
Why,
thought Nellie, as the hugeness of her realization swept her —
there would be no need for Detta, the underground bases or the Black Core program. It could all be scrapped, all of it. ALL OF IT.

Taking a deep breath, she shot one last glance at the shorn-headed girl in the mirror. Sometimes the possibilites in life were too enormous to even think about. “C’mon,” she said to Nell. “Let’s go sit at the back door.”

“Sure,” her twin said obligingly. Leaving the washroom, they followed the hall to the back entrance, then settled on the floor and pressed their faces to the outer door’s wire screen. Going outside was strictly forbidden, so this was as close as they could come, but still Nellie couldn’t get enough of it — real air, a breeze she could smell, and the soft never-ending rustle of doogden leaves. And there, over the trees that lined the back fence, hovered the two moons of Lulunar, shrunk to their final crescent stage. Nellie calculated swiftly. Today was the fifty-ninth day of Lulunar — tomorrow the month would be over. Already the moons were putting distance between themselves, beginning the individual trajectories that would take them to far-flung regions of the sky.

But not me and Nell,
Nellie thought fervently, running her fingertip over the window screen. No, she and her twin weren’t some dumb moons that came together for one month a year, then separated again. And now they were together, they were going to stay together forever.
FOREVER,
Nellie thought fiercely, jabbing her finger against the screen.

Nell tossed her a grin and Nellie flushed, realizing her twin had read her thoughts. “Don’t worry,” Nell said. “I’m not going to take off into another level any time soon. At least not without you and Deller. And I’m sure my weasely double will want to tag along too, just so she can boss us around and tell us what to do.”

Eagerly Nellie turned to her and asked, “D’you think the levels are still fixed? Or did they come unfixed when the Gods’ heaven broke up?”

“Not Gods,” Nell said sharply. “They’re just sarpas, beings that vibrate faster than humans. You’ve got to stop calling them Gods, Nellie. Anyway, that’s what I want to find out — are the other levels still fixed or not? But only when our heads get better, of course.” Screwing up her face, she stared thoughtfully into the yard. “Eld, the king sarpa, told us they’d made a heaven for each level, right? But what we don’t know is if all the heavens busted up together, or just the one we were in. And what happened to all those stars? D’you think they went back to their bodies? The ones that are still alive, that is? Y’know, like Fen.”

“I dunno,” said Nellie. “Remember the priest in the cathedral? He didn’t get his soul back, he had a sarpa inside him.”

“D’you think every sarpa did that?” asked Nell, slanting her a sideways glance. “Escaped heaven by thinking himself into the body of someone whose soul was sucked out to become a star?”

Nellie nodded slowly. “They all thought the same, right? Remember when those sarpas were hit by the king’s fireball? All the other sarpas created water buckets with their minds to put out the fire — there were hundreds of buckets and they all looked
exactly
the same.”

“Yeah,” Nell agreed. “They were pretty fixed, more than us humans. It happens in the quicker levels — everyone’s minds link up and they all think the same. That’s why we survived, really. All those sarpas were just standing around, waiting for the king to tell them what to do. And he always had to be the big boss and handle
everything himself. Now if they’d been unfixed and thinking for themselves, we would’ve been goners.”

“Huh,” said Nellie, her eyes on a small wickawoo flitting across the yard. “Y’know what I still don’t get about this whole thing? Why the sarpas wanted you dead and me alive. You’re a much better person than me, not so fucked up. Why didn’t they pick you to be the Goddess, and me to be the anchoring star?”

Wrapping her arms around her knees, Nell stared silently through the window screen. “We’re the same person,” she said finally. “I’m half of you. So if you’d done what they said and shot me, half of you would’ve been dead, and the other half a killer. Think about it, Nellie — it would’ve been like killing yourself, except you were still alive. There would’ve been no love left in you anywhere, just like there’s no love in them.”

Nell paused, sucking on her lower lip. “They wanted a Goddess who was exactly like them, one who could vibrate on their frequency — a frequency full of hate. If you had love in you, they wouldn’t have been able to use you as a vessel and manifest through you. And that was what they needed — me as an anchoring star to fix all their heavens, and you as a half-dead Goddess full of hate that they could use as a vessel to control the people of the Interior in the real levels.

“But you didn’t kill me like they wanted.” Nell brushed quickly at her face, and Nellie saw tears sliding down her cheeks. “And it had to be you who killed me, Nellie, not them. If they’d killed me, it wouldn’t have worked the same. It had to be you —
you
had to hate me enough to kill me because that would’ve completely fixed you to their frequency.”