Roderick Gordon - Deeper

Will stuck his head a little farther around the edge of the boulder. He'd had to turn off the headset to protect it, and the blinding intensity of the lights made it difficult to see, but he could make out someone — it certainly looked like Rebecca. She was standing in the open ground between two menhirs. He pulled back and glanced at Elliott, who was still lying prone, an array of explosives and stove guns within easy reach on the ground. She adjusted the position of her arms, ready to fire on the figure, even without the use of the scope.

"Don't! Don't shoot her," Will begged in a whisper. "The stalkers!"

Elliott didn't reply, her focus fixed on her target.

"Will! Got a little surprise for you!" Rebecca called out. Before she'd finished speaking, her voice came again, like some ventriloquist's trick. "Quite a surprise!"

Will frowned, and couldn't stop himself from taking another look.

"Meet my twin sister," Rebecca's voice announced. Or, rather, two voices announced, in unison.

"Careful!" Elliott warned as Will got to his feet and stuck his head even farther around the side of the menhir.

As he watched, the solitary figure appeared to split into two, revealing that a second girl had been standing immediately behind the first. The two turned to face each other, and Will saw identical profiles. They were mirror images.

"No!" he choked in disbelief, pulling back a little, then leaning out again.

"How's that for a bombshell, bro?" the Rebecca on the left shouted.

"All the time, there's been two of us, completely interchangeable," the Rebecca on the right cackled.

His eyes weren't deceiving him.

There were two Rebeccas, side by side.

It had to be a trick — an illusion of some kind, or maybe a second person wearing a mask. But no. As the twins moved, as the twins talked, it seemed as though they were absolutely identical.

They continued to chatter in such a quick-fire way that he couldn't tell which of them was saying what.

"Your worst nightmare — two irksome little skin and blisters , two little sisters!"

"How else do you think we worked it when one of us had to be Topsoil at all times?"

"We took turns babysitting you a the Highfield home."

"One on, one off, one up, one down, doing tours of duty for all those years."

"We both know you so well…"

"We've both cooked your lousy food…"

"…picked up your filthy clothes…"

"…washed your soiled, stinking underpants…"

"You dirty dog!" one sneered in disgust.

"…and listened to you blubber in your sleep, crying out for Mammy …"

"…but Mammy don't care…"

Despite the dire situation he found himself in, Will squirmed with acute embarrassment. It would have been bad enough if there was only a single Rebecca saying all this, but two of them, knowing every little intimate detail there was to know about him — and discussing it between them! It was more than he could bear.

"Shut up, you foul cow!" he screamed.

"Oooh, touchy, touchy," one of the twins cooed mockingly.

Temporarily oblivious to the legion of Limiters surrounding him, Will was suddenly transported back to his home in Highfield, to how it had been for all those years before his father went missing. He and his sister continually clashing over the most trivial of things. This felt exactly like another of their outrageous spats when she would wind him up with her interminable needling and well-aimed taunts. The outcome was always the same — he would eventually blow his top, and she would stand back to gloat, a smug smirk on her face.

"And I think you mean foul cows," the Rebecca on the right suggested with a sibilant "s," while the other continued to harangue him.

"But Mammy didn't have time for her little Will… he wasn't in the program guide…"

"… he wasn't Must-See TV."

Two belly laughs.

"What a sad, sad boy," a twin cawed.

"Joe Nobody digging his stupid holes, all on his lonesome."

"Digging for Daddy's love," sneered the other, and they both cackled uproariously.

Will closed his eyes — it was as if they were poking around inside his head, picking out and cruelly exposing his innermost fears and secrets. Nothing was inviolate — the twins were putting everything on show for all to see.

Then the twin on the left spoke out, her voice deadly serious.

"What we wanted to tell you, Will, and that lumbering oaf Chester, is that very soon now there won't be any home to go back to."

"No more Topsoilers," the second twin warbled gleefully.

"Well, not quite so many," the first corrected her in a sing-song voice.

"What are they saying?" Chester demanded. He was sweating profusely, his face an ashen white under the patches of dirt.

Will had had enough.

"Lies! It's all a load of lies!" he shouted, his whole body shaking with terror and anger.

"You saw for yourself, we've been busy bees in the Eternal City," a twin said. "We've had the Division prospecting there for years."

"And they finally isolated the very bug we were looking for. Our scientists did some work on it, and her are the fruits of their labors."

Will watched as the twin on the left took something that hung around her neck and held it up into the searchlights. It glittered as the beams caught it: a small glass phial, or so it appeared.

"Choice little number, this… bottled genocide… the big daddy of all pandemics from centuries ago. We call it Dominion."

"Dominion," the other repeated.

"We're going to let it rip Topsoil and—"

"— the Colony will reclaim its rightful home."

The twin with the phial proffered it to her sister as if she was proposing a toast.

"To a new London."

"To a new world," the other one added.

"Yes, world ."

"I don't believe you, you witches! It's all trash talk!" Will protested. "You're lying!"

"Why would we bother?" the twin on the right countered, waving a second phial. "See this? We've got the vaccine, old chap. You Topsoilers won't be able to produce it in time. The whole country will be crippled, and there for the taking."

"So don't flatter yourself that we're down her just on your account."

"We've been doing a spot of spring-cleaning in the Deeps, ridding it of rotten old renegades and traitors to the cause."

"As well as running some final trials on Dominion — but then, some of your new buds have seen that for themselves."

"Ask Elliott. She knows the story."

At the mention of her name, Elliott jerked her head up from behind the rifle. "The Bunker," she mouthed at Will, recalling the sealed cells she'd blundered across with Cal.

Will's mind raced. He knew in his gut that Rebecca — the Rebeccas, he had to keep reminding himself — were capable of the most abject cruelty. Did they really have a plague? His thoughts were brought to an abrupt end as the twosome started up again.

"So, to business, bro," the Rebecca on the left said. "We're going to make you a one-time offer."

"But we're going back first," added the other.

Will watched as the doppelgangers both spun daintily on their toes and began to skip their way up the slope.

"I might be able to nail one…" Elliott whispered. She was behind her rifle again.

"No, wait!" Will pleaded with her.

"…but not both," Elliott went on.

"No. You'll only make it worse. Hear what they've got to say," Will begged, the blood in his veins turning to ice as he imagined the pack of stalkers descending on their gang of four, ripping each of them limb from limb.

As he watched, both figures slipped from view among the menhirs. What were the twins up to? What was this offer going to be?